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EATING INDIA

An Odyssey into the Food and
Culture of the Land of Spices

CHITRITA BANERJI

A Jelectatle journey
tliroug^li tlie myriaa cuisines an
food traditions of India

W hai American diners go out for “Indian”
food, the dishes they encounter usually
have their origins in just one region, Punjab.
But India, which is as much of an immigrant
nation as the United States, has a vast range
of distinctive regional cuisines that are just
beginning to be widely known in the West.

In Eating India, award-winning food writer
Chitrita Banerji takes readers on a marvelous
odyssey through a national cuisine formed by
generations of arrivals, assimilations, and
conquests. With each wave of newcomers—
ancient Aryan tribes, Persians, Middle Eastern
Jews, Mongols, Arabs, Europeans—have
come new innovations in cooking, and new
ways to apply India’s rich native spices, poppy
seeds, saffron, and mustard to the vegetables,
milks, grains, legumes, and fishes that are
staples of the Indian kitchen.

A Calcutta native and a longtime U.S.
resident herself, Banerji describes in lush and
mouthwatering prose her travels through^
land blessed with marvelous culinary vari¬
ety. Certain to delight anyone enamored of
Indian food, contemplating a trip to India,
or seeking inspiration in their own kitulj
Eating India is a glorious new additio
the classics of food writing.

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EATING INDIA

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Life and Food in Bengal
Bengali Cooking: Seasons and Festivals
Feeding the Gods: Memories of Food and Culture in Bengal
Land of Milk and Honey: Travels in the History of Indian Food

EATING INDIA

An Odyssey into the Food and
Culture of the Land of Spices

Chitrita Banerji

BLOOMSBURY

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner what¬
soever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth

Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers

All papers used by Bloomsbury USA are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown
in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental
regulations of the country of origin.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Banerji, Chitrita.

Eating India : an odyssey into the food and culture of the land of spices / Chitrita
Banerji.—1st US. ed.
p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-59691-018-8 (hardcover)

ISBN-10: 1-59691-018-6 (hardcover)

1. Diet—India. 2. Food habits—India. 3. Cookery, Indie. 4. India—Social life and
customs. I. Title.

TX360.I4B255 2007 _ _ - - - -

394.r20954—dc22

3 1223 07578 0446 2007005650

First US. Edition 2007

13579 10 8642

Typeset by Westchester Book Group
Printed in the United States of America by Quebecor World Fairfield

For Jai

Cooking is at once the most and the least localized of the arts; it owes its de¬
velopment to commerce and to travel, and its preservation to stout regional¬
ism; it must find its character in the resources at hand, yet may enrich these
by some of the good things from outside. Every enlarging contribution was
made by clever, articulate and traveled men, yet the burden is carried and
handed on by obscure local women. The history of cooking, with its inter¬
changes and migrations, is indeed hard to pin down.

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CONTENTS

Note to the Reader xi

Prologue xiii

PART I

Chapter One: Bengal: Land of a Thousand Rivers 3

Chapter Two: In Pursuit of the Portuguese: From Bengal to Goa 29

Chapter Three: Road Food on the Highway 45

Chapter Four: A Southern Thali in Karnataka 55

Chapter Five: The Anglo-Indian Table 74

PART II

Chapter Six: Pilgrimage and Pageantry in Amritsar 89

Chapter Seven: Banquets of the Imperial Palace—Muslim Style 106
Chapter Eight: Benaras: Feasting and Fasting in Shiva’s City 141

PART III

Chapter Nine: Art and Texture on the Gujarati Platter 159

Chapter Ten: Bombay: City by the Sea 184

Chapter Eleven: Kerala: Rich Cuisines of the Pepper Kingdom 197

Chapter Twelve: The Vanishing Jews of India 220

Chapter Thirteen: The Indigenous Pot 234

Chapter Fourteen: Saffron Desires 248

Acknowledgments 263

Note to the Reader

This book is based on several trips I made to India between 2003 and
2006. My journeys there did not follow a linear chronological or geo¬
graphical sequence; nor did I set out to write a comprehensive chronicle
of the cuisines of India. My selection of destinations (some of which I
visited more than once) and cuisines was based on what seemed to
promise the most interesting revelations. My objective was to see how
much authenticity in food and cookery could possibly survive in the
changing, young-old, immigrant nation that is India.

For the convenience of readers who have not been to India, I have
used the older, more familiar names and spellings of cities, towns, and

rivers.

Prologue

It was a frigid white morning in Boston. Sorting through a pile of mail,
I had come upon a square beige envelope, one corner embossed with a
colored illustration—a young banana plant, leaves drooping gracefully,
standing next to an earthen pitcher with a green coconut on top. For
Hindu families like mine, both banana and coconut are highly auspi¬
cious, and their presence is obligatory at most rituals and ceremonies.
This envelope had to be an invitation of some kind. The card inside
sported a large blue and gold butterfly, symbol of Brahma the Creator,
patron saint of marriage and union. Opening the card, I read the invita¬
tion. The son of a longtime family friend in Calcutta was getting mar¬
ried. They wanted me to come.

I looked out of my window. Forlorn, leafless trees under a gray sky,
piles of grungy snow on the street, people walking with the insular gait

XIV

PROLOGUE

of a North American winter—head down, scarves pulled up to the nose,
gloved hands in pockets for extra protection from the cutting chill. The
mild, sunlit, gregarious cheer of winter in my native Bengal was utterly
implausible in this landscape of solitude. I examined the card again. It
felt like eons since I had taken part in a wedding in India. Not being
closely connected to the Bengali/Indian community in Boston, I had
also missed weddings at which the immigrant imagination tries to re¬
create ancient homegrown traditions. Should I make an exception by
accepting this invitation, and how would I feel if I did?

As I kept staring at the card, a very different image rose before my
eyes—a luscious, rippling swath of green falling away from both sides of
a green ridge. It was a freshly washed banana leaf on which a long se¬
quence of foods was being served to be savored with eyes, nose, fingers,
and mouth. Not just any old banana leaf, but the one off which I had
eaten at my aunt’s wedding many decades ago. From half a world away,
half a lifetime back, it sent me an imperious summons to remember and
relive. Time and space melted away to make me a small child seated at a
trestle table, fingers eagerly poised to dip into the nutmeg- and mace-
scented rice pilaf (or polao, as we called it in Bengali) heaped on the
leaf Around the pilaf was arranged a number of other items, each en¬
dowed with its own promise. For the child that I then was, the feast was
the culmination of a long day filled with unsettling emotions, exquisite
music, loud and chaotic activity, and, above all, color and smell.

The vision of this fragrant, opulent, sapid banquet lingered in my
mind throughout the day. It not only revived numerous distant memo¬
ries, it roiled my thoughts and feelings as if an expert cook was stirring
my brain with her spatula. Or was it the hand of a dairymaid—like the
ones who frolicked and flirted with the young god Krishna as de¬
scribed in mythology—churning cream for butter? Whatever the culi¬
nary metaphor, I found that the distant past was suddenly overwriting
the present.

My aunt got married at a time when ceremonies were conducted at
home, not in rented halls. Nobody seemed to mind the chaotic upheaval
of realigned spaces, the bumping into upended furniture, or the crowds

PROLOGUE

of relatives milling around for days. The roof of my grandparents’ large,
rambling four-story house was converted into a kitchen and banquet
hall. Under a red and white canopy, the guests sat in front of long tres¬
tle tables. Bengalis, like most Indians, have always eaten with their fin¬
gers. Instead of plates and cutlery, each person was given a banana leaf.
Rows of tiny lightbulbs strung up on bamboo poles illuminated droplets
of water that lingered on the glossy surface after the leaf had been
washed. On one corner of the leaf sat the discreet embroidery of a
pinch of salt, a wedge of lime, and two green chilies. As the feast pro¬
gressed and different items were served in the traditionally approved se¬
quence, a tapestry of colors and textures came to life on the palette of
basic green. The consumer became an actor in a painterly enterprise.

Eating off a banana leaf was a vastly different experience from eating
out of a ceramic, porcelain, or metal plate. Your fingers got wedded to the
sensory connotations of flaky luchis, soft vegetables, grainy legumes, and
fluffy pilaf, even as your fingertips interacted with the silkiness of the leaf.
When the pieces of carp or bhetki or other fish swimming in a redolent
sauce were ladled out, you had to quickly blend the pilaf with them, lest
the sauce run away to the edge of the leaf and spill over on the table. As
for the piece de resistance, a malaikari of enormous freshwater prawns,
the green banana leaf provided a perfect foil for a melange of hues.
Scarlet-orange shells covered the heads and tails of the prawns, contrast¬
ing with their pale flesh. The sauce that covered them was ruby red,
gleaming with the richness of spices, coconut milk, ghee, and the coral
oozing from the heads.

Even the palate cleansers that followed—sweet-and-sour chutneys
made with tomatoes, plums, or pineapples—glowed with deep jewel
tones on the leaf in a way not possible on inorganic surfaces of porce¬
lain, ceramic, or metal. Mopping up these viscous delicacies required a
manual and digital dexterity that eating with cutlery did not. But to¬
ward the end, most people broke off pieces of crisp pappadams that
came with the chutneys and used them as impromptu spoons to scrape
the leaf clean in preparation for the final course, dessert. On that eve¬
ning, the guests began with the Bengali classics, an assortment in creamy

XVI

PROLOGUE

white—sandesh, rosogolla, and mishti doi (sweet yogurt). These were
balanced by the dark, juicy brown of pantua (a deep-fried sweet made
with cottage cheese and evaporated milk) and the orange-flecked gold
of darbesh exuding the scent of mace and nutmeg.

Replete at last, the diners received a final touch of green—a chaser
of sharp-sweet paan (betel leaf), scented with camphor water, and
wrapped in a cone around sweet spices, shredded coconut, and tiny crys¬
tals of sugar. A banquet that had taken two days to prepare had to be
consumed in a leisurely manner to do justice to its taste and nuance.
And the pensive chewing and savoring of paan afterward was, as the an¬
cients knew well, the perfect segue from ingesting to digesting.

At home, for everyday meals, we ate off china and enamel plates in¬
stead of banana leaves. But the numerous offerings of this plant, as well
as its symbolism, were very much a part of our consciousness. During
my first year in college, my mother gave me a cotton sari whose color
was called “young banana leaf green.” It had a narrow border, woven
with white silk thread that intensified the vividness of the green. Drap¬
ing the sari over myself, I stood for many minutes in front of the mirror,
entranced with the effect of the green on my body. Even the ruthless
Mughal conqueror Babur was impressed with the plant, which he de¬
scribed in his memoir, Baburnama, as “a good-looking tree with its
broad, flat, beautiful green leaves.”

On the rare occasion when I felt I had done something that deserved
a reward, I would ask my mother, the culinary genius in our extended
family, to construct an entire meal out of the offerings of the banana
plant. And she would oblige. There was banana blossom cooked with
diced potatoes, coconut chips, and tiny chickpeas, seasoned with bay leaf,
cumin, whole green chilies, and garam masala; banana blossom mixed
with ground mustard and shredded coconut, gently steamed inside an en¬
velope of banana leaves; the subtly glowing ivory pith of the banana
trunk (used in ancient Sanskrit poetry as the perfect simile for a desirable
woman’s leg), cooked with tiny shrimp, or seasoned with whole mustard,
turmeric, and green chilies; croquettes made with the spiced mashed flesh
of a plantainlike green banana.

PROLOGUE

XVI1

In snowbound Boston, however, such images were the stuff of fan¬
tasy and, over the years, had receded into the unlit corners of my mind,
until the arrival of the invitation resurrected them. Instead of sending
off a polite letter explaining why I couldn’t come, I surprised myself by
seriously considering a trip.

I had no illusions about recapturing the chaotic exuberance of my
aunt’s wedding. Urban weddings these days have become events orga¬
nized in a professional manner, with far less chaos, intimacy, and per¬
sonal involvement of family members. People rent halls, hire caterers,
and reduce the disruption at home. Having seen the film Monsoon Wed¬
ding, I was even prepared for the once unthinkable presence of an event
planner. The rituals of the Hindu wedding are complex, lengthy, and ar¬
duous but, even so, modernity has made room for some degree of com¬
fort. When my aunt got married, the bride was fed a predawn meal that
combined fruit, yogurt, and rice flakes, which had to sustain her through
a daylong fast until the ceremony started in the evening. Brides today
are permitted light snacks to keep up their energies and spirits for the
ceremony itself. As for the wedding feast, I had heard and read too much
about the waning of traditional Bengali cooks to expect even a near¬
duplication of that banana-leaf spread.

Still, I resolved to go. Preparing myself for all kinds of letdowns—
wasn’t the past always more attractive in remembrance than in
actuality?—1 made ready for this impulsive voyage. It was not till the sec¬
ond leg of the journey, when I was on the plane from London to Cal¬
cutta, that I saw what the leaf was trying to tell me. This didn’t have to be
an attempt to recapture a bygone golden era. Rather, it was an opportu¬
nity to examine current realities, an opportunity to be relished as much as
a banquet from the hands of a master.

During all my years as a food writer, I had never stepped out of the
well-defined territory of my native Bengal. Championing the cause of
regional cuisine as the only authentic culinary identity, I had scoffed at
the mere mention of “Indian” food or curry powder, which I came
across often enough in the United States. Yet it was becoming more and
more apparent, even from faraway America, that an inevitable fusion of

PROLOGUE

xviii

influences from disparate areas was changing the nature of regional
foods and eating habits in modern India. And, in fact, there was nothing
new about this trend. The same Bengali cuisine that I wanted the world
to know and appreciate, instead of focusing on the ersatz curries and
tikka masalas available in Indian restaurants everywhere, has also evolved
and changed over the centuries. Even a casual look at the pages of Ben¬
gali narratives going back to medieval times reveals significant differ¬
ences from the way we cook and eat in Bengal today. With the passage
of the centuries, Bengali cuisine has eagerly taken and absorbed exotic
ingredients, and repeatedly been modified by external influences. The
same is true of other regional cuisines in the subcontinent.

In this context, what was authenticity? I had to ask myself. In an un¬
stable, mobile age, when large numbers of Indians are leaving home and
migrating to other parts of their country in search of jobs and oppor¬
tunities (as people do in America), when do the borders of regional
uniqueness relax and let a pan-Indian identity emerge? Is it possible for
specialties rooted in ingredient, terrain, altitude, soil, and cultural beliefs
to survive in a time of rapid perpetual motion? The time seemed ripe
for an expedition.

“What would you like, madam, the beef or the chicken?” asked the
stewardess in her clipped British accent.

Dragged out of my speculations, I looked at the menu card. There it
was again. “Chicken tikka masala with rice and vegetables.” Even on a
British Airways flight, there was no getting away from a dish that sup¬
posedly owed its origins to enterprising Punjabi restaurateurs trying to
make a living in different cities after being uprooted from their home
territories by the 1947 Partition of India. Despite a jab of reflexive
annoyance at the ubiquity of this nontraditional, contextless dish, I
couldn’t help acknowledging a reluctant admiration for a community
that had successfully created brand names out of chicken tikka masala or
tandoori chicken. Like McDonald’s with their Big Mac or Burger King
with their Whopper, the Punjabis are making their creations a part of
the urban eating vocabulary in the West.

PROLOGUE

XIX

The smile on the air-hostess’s face was waning as she waited for me
to choose. It was not too difficult to decide that between several items of
plastic airline food, the best option for me had to be the one with a mod¬
icum of spice, fragrance, and color. Chicken tikka masala it was, on the
flight to Calcutta. Giant freshwater prawns in a rich red sauce, or steamed
banana blossom with ground mustard, would, like the ideal of authentic¬
ity, continue to elude me until touchdown in the land that had given
birth to all of us—me, the banana tree, the prawns. Even there, it was pos¬
sible that what I ate would fall short of what I thought it should be.

PART ONE

Chapter One

Bengal: Land of a Thousand Rivers

Bengalis love fish. Mention Bengali food to anyone in India, and the first
image it evokes is that of fish and rice. The second image is that of sweets
made from chhana (fresh cottage cheese). Geography is responsible for
the first, an accident of history for the second. Although a wedding invi¬
tation started me on this Indian culinary odyssey, the history of Bengali
sweets had been intriguing enough for me to have made an earlier ex¬
ploratory trip to a destination hundreds of miles from my native region.

From a high aerial perspective you can see Bengal (and historically,
this includes both the Indian state of West Bengal and the country of
Bangladesh) as an enormous delta in the eastern part of India, criss¬
crossed by rivers and rills too numerous to count. The smaller ones join

BENGAL: LAND OF A THOUSAND RIVERS

up with the major rivers like the Ganges, the Padma, and the Brahmapu¬
tra, but eventually, they all find their way into the salty waters of the Bay
of Bengal. On the map, you will see the emptying out of this collective
water pitcher identified as the Mouths of the Ganges.

Fly lower down, and you see the land that makes the delta—alluvial
soil, renewed every year with the silt deposited by flooding rivers, pre¬
cious as gold to the farmer. In poetry and literature, “golden Bengal” is a
recurrent image. In physical terms, it is an extraordinarily fertile land,
with the Tropic of Cancer running through it, just south of my city, Cal¬
cutta. Emerald acres of rice; dense groves of bamboo, banana, coconut,
and palm; orchards of mango and other fruits; fields bursting with greens
and vegetables; and rivers, lakes, ponds, and canals teeming with fish—
Bengal seems to have been more than ordinarily favored by nature. In the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, long before it had been split into
two, this one region supplied much of the food for the imperial Mughal
army. But behind the beauty there is the darkness, and the varied seasons
that produce so much of Bengal’s food can often take on a fearsome, de¬
structive aspect. Ruinous monsoon floods, violent autumn cyclones bred
in the Bay of Bengal, searing summer droughts—all are visited on Bengal
by nature. Overall, however, this is a land that has fed her people well.

The presence of the rivers and the lakes and the rich coastal waters
bordered by the mangrove forests of the Sunderbans, have automatically
made freshwater fish a major part of the Bengali diet. Even the crus¬
taceans that Bengalis adore—prawn, shrimp, and crab—are harvested
from lakes, rivers, and estuaries, not the open sea. Moreover, fish here, as
in many parts of China, is not merely food. As a symbol of prosperity
and fertility, it touches many aspects of ceremonial and ritual life. A
Bengali Hindu wedding, like the one I was about to attend, is replete
with such symbolism.

Both my parents loved to shop for food. In our extended family, my
mother’s kitchen was famed as a renewable source of gastronomic de¬
light. And the one thing she loved above all was fish, no matter what its
size, texture, or density of flesh and bone. As a picky and temperamental
child, I didn’t share her enthusiasm. Until I was old enough to go to

EATING INDIA

college, when an expansion of my world helped develop my palate,
there were only a few kinds of fish that 1 tolerated. The rest, however
much they were recommended by mother and grandmother as “brain
food,” were anathema, particularly the tiny, excessively bony creatures
that were either crisply fried or made into fiery, red-hot concoctions
with julienned potatoes.

As I grew into my teens, what particularly aggrieved me was being
dragged to the fish market by my mother, despite vigorous protests. She
was determined that I should grow up with some sense of where my food
came from. I hated the noise, the crowds, and the slippery, wet surface of
the aisles bordered with gutters where the fishmongers, sitting on high
slabs of concrete, threw out fish offal and dirty water with careless aban¬
don even as they loudly touted their goods. Sometimes, my mother
bought a fish head to cook with roasted moong dal—a specialty that
makes Bengali fish lovers salivate, while outsiders grow queasy. Choosing
a majestic carp, she would command the fishmonger to cut off the head
and then portion it. With fascination bordering on horror, I watched as
the man picked up the huge fish in both hands and ran it with one swift,
yet powerful movement against the blade of the bonti, a Bengali cutting
instrument whose curving blade rises vertically out of a thick wooden
wedge placed on the floor. As he triumphantly held up the head with its
exposed dark red gills, it seemed more alive than the whole fish. Instinc¬
tively, I closed my eyes and held my breath lest some fishy spirit haunt me.
Returning home from the market, 1 scrubbed my face, hands, and arms
with soap and water, and rubbed down my dress with wet hands, hoping
to delete the odor of fish but uneasily aware of its lingering potency.

It was not until many years later that I saw Louis Malle’s film Atlantic
City, with the unforgettable image of Susan Sarandon rubbing her hands
and body with lemon juice after serving oysters in the bar. As a disgrun¬
tled teen, my only comfort came from recalling the story of the fisher¬
man’s daughter in India’s great epic, the Maliabharata. The young woman
helped her father in his work and ferried passengers across the river in
their little dinghy to make extra money. Although she was beautiful, her
odor was strong enough for the neighbors to call her Matsyagandha, “She

BENGAL: LAND OF A THOUSAND RIVERS

Who Smells of Fish.” One day, a holy man came to the river and asked
her to ferry him across. Sitting across from her, he was so overwhelmed
by her beauty that he asked her to have a child with him. When she
agreed, he rewarded her by permanently changing her body chemistry.
From that time, no matter what she did, she emitted only a beautiful flo¬
ral fragrance. Every time my mother took me to the fish market, I wished
with all my heart that I would find a generous holy man at the entrance,
who would make the offensive smell vanish.

Arriving in Cambridge as a graduate student, I discovered that
nothing symbolized the contrariness of an outsider’s life better than
one’s reaction to fish. In New England, a long maritime history has cre¬
ated an eating universe ruled by cod, halibut, tuna, salmon, bluefish,
swordfish, and other inhabitants of the great Atlantic, so much so, that
the word fish is almost synonymous with seafood. But in those early days
after arrival, I was ignorant enough to repeatedly fall into the trap un¬
wittingly set by generous American hosts.

“Do you like fish?” they would ask as they took me out to dinner.

“Oh, yes,” I would respond with Bengali enthusiasm, having easily
tired of the large pieces of chicken covered with fatty skin, the ham¬
burgers, and the recalcitrant cuts of meat labeled “London broil” that
were served in the dormitory cafeterias of that time.

And so they took me to well-known “fish” restaurants. Each time,
I ordered an item with a new name, and each time, I encountered the
strong, briny flavor guaranteed to put off a person used to eating fresh¬
water fish. In Bengal, where the rivers rule the land, the ocean is rarely
explored as a source of fish. In fact, marine fish are traditionally consid¬
ered inferior to fish harvested from lakes and rivers, and are conse¬
quently much cheaper. All my favorite varieties were freshwater ones.
Confronted by the disconcerting flavor of the fish served to me in
America, I assumed at first that what I didn’t like was the blandness of
the preparation, the total lack of spices. If only the Puritan palate could
embrace the tangy seasonings of my native land, what a difference it
would make, I reflected as I picked at my portion. Since I didn’t know
how to cook, this was a natural mistake. Gradually, however, I figured

EATING INDIA

out that this was a cultural, not a culinary divide: it was the seafood itself
that tasted so foreign to me. And despite the many years spent here, I
have not been able to cross it. The offerings of the sea, with a couple of
exceptions, do not quicken desire in me. It is, however, a Bengali limita¬
tion, not an Indian one. The food of India’s coastal states, like Goa, Ker¬
ala, and Maharashtra on the west, and Orissa on the east, includes many
kinds of seafood transformed by intensely flavorful spices.

There were five days to go before the wedding, when I landed in Cal¬
cutta. I was glad to have that time to get over jet lag and revisit some
familiar haunts. Calcutta, supposedly founded by the British trader Job
Charnock who landed in the area in 1690, grew out of three villages and
became a major port for the East India Company’s early operations. It
was also the first capital of British-ruled India. Throughout the nine¬
teenth century and the early part of the twentieth, the city was an intel¬
lectual and political hub, and Bengalis were renowned for their scholarly,
literary, and artistic accomplishments. Much earlier, however, in the an¬
cient and medieval period, Bengalis were also famed for their success in
maritime trading. The rivers of Bengal were the conduits of goods that
made their way to seaports in distant locations. Aside from agricultural
crops and dairy products, Bengal also produced high-quality cane sugar,
indigo, and fine textiles. After the independence of India and the parti¬
tion of Bengal in 1947, however, the region was caught in a cruel down¬
ward spiral, with the influx of refugees from East Pakistan/Bangladesh,
economic downturn, loss of industries, and a pervasive disaffection
among the middle class. Regretful longings for a glorious past dominated
the conversation in many living rooms and coffeehouses.

These days, however. I’m often reminded of an old Bengali fairy
tale about an adventurous prince who arrives at a deserted castle and
discovers a beautiful girl lying in an enchanted sleep. Looking closer, he
sees a small gold stick near her head, and a silver one near her feet. Be¬
ing a clever fellow, he makes the right guess and wakes her with a touch
of the golden stick. She tells him that she has been abducted by an evil
demon who puts her in an enchanted sleep with the silver stick when he

BENGAL: LAND OF A THOUSAND RIVERS

goes out hunting. During recent visits to Calcutta, I have had the sense
of a search going on for the golden stick that will help the city wake to
a new era of renaissance and possibility. And though the small towns and
rural areas of Bengal are far removed from the aura of a metropolis, they,
too, project a sense of looking for revival.

On the morning of the wedding, I drove up to the groom’s family home
in Calcutta’s Salt Lake area—a onetime extensive marsh that has been
gradually filled and developed to meet the needs of a growing population.
Fish was much on my mind. The glorious fish and prawn dishes of feasts
past paraded before my eyes: kalia, jhol, jhal, ambal, malaikari, murighanto,
dal made with fish head, and that extraordinary adaptation from the
British, the “fish fry” made with fillets of bhetki marinated in a paste of
onion, ginger, and green chilies before being breaded and fried crisp. Two
other misnomers resulting from the colonial experience—the chop and
the cutlet—were also part of the festive meals in the old days; and, as chil¬
dren, my cousins and I loved them. A Bengah chop is a round or oval po¬
tato cake stuffed with minced fish or meat, which is dipped in eggs and
bread crumbs and then fried. A cutlet, which can be chicken, meat, or
prawn, usually means one of those elements seasoned and pounded lightly
to form a long, flat oval that is then breaded and fried. Fries, chops, and
cutlets are usually served with a tomato-cucumber-onion salad and a
mouthwatering, brain-exploding sauce called kasundi that has nothing
colonial about it. It is made with the tart green mangoes of summer,
mixed with pungent mustard oil and ground mustard. To any Bengali, it is
to die for.

Aside from the pleasures of eating, I also wondered whether fish as
a ritual item in a wedding had survived. On the first day of the wedding
(Flindu wedding ceremonies take three days to be completed and con¬
summated), the groom’s family usually sends an array of gifts, called
tatto, to the bride’s home, the most spectacular item being a whole
fish—a rui (Bengali carp), the biggest the family can afford to buy. I still
vividly remember the princely specimen that had appeared at my grand¬
parents’ house on the morning of my aunt’s wedding, its silvery-pink

EATING INDIA

scales gleaming in the sunlight. The enormous head was decorated with
patterns drawn with an oil-and-vermilion paste, and garlands of jasmine
encircled its portly girth. Was it possible, I mused, walking in through
the gates embellished with banana-leaf banners, to obtain a fish of that
size in this age of overfished rivers?

Before I could find out, however, I was stopped in my tracks by the
activities going on in the family garage, transformed into a makeshift
kitchen. Three portable stoves, enormous kadhais (Indian woks), wide¬
mouthed cooking pots, and two sets of grinding stones for spices, were fu¬
eling the orderly frenzy that precedes a traditional Bengali meal. An old
man wielding a spatula directed operations, loudly berating his assistants,
who halved, sliced, chopped, and diced vegetables as if their lives depended
on it. With his long gray hair knotted into a tight bun, gray beard, betel
juice^tained mouth, and checked lungi (a saronglike wrap from waist to
ankle), the man was almost a twin of the master chef my grandfather had
hired to cook for my aunt’s wedding. Could it be that I was wrong in as¬
suming that wedding feasts were no longer cooked at home?

Sadly, I wasn’t. As my host informed me, the cooking in the garage
was only for the benefit of relatives, friends, and visitors from foreign
parts who show up for the occasion and stick around for the day, some
being helpful, some adding to the chaos, but all expecting lunch, which
has traditionally been the main meal of the day. A closer look at all the
items on display indicated that I was in luck. This was to be the kind of
traditional Bengali meal whose disappearance everyone bemoaned these
days, the kind that began with an odd Bengali favorite, the one hardest
to duplicate in an American kitchen—shukto.

A bitter vegetable dish eaten as a starter with rice during the mid¬
day meal, shukto remains a perennial puzzle for outsiders. More com¬
mon among Hindus than Muslims, shukto’s unique value is based on the
gastronomic theory that it prepares the tongue and the stomach for the
courses that follow. That theory, in turn, is derived from the ancient In¬
dian science of Ayurveda, which ascribes specific attributes to each fruit,
vegetable, and spice. The system decrees that certain foods are “hot,”
and therefore ideal for fueling the body in winter, while others are

BENGAL: LAND OF A THOUSAND RIVERS

“cold” and therefore suitable for the torrid hot summers of India.
Shukto, considered a cooling dish, includes such vegetables as eggplant,
white radish, green banana, potato, green papaya, and, most important,
bitter melon, called karola in Bengali. The bitter melon is sometimes
supplemented with the equally bitter-tasting leaves of the neem (mar-
gosa) tree or those of patol, a climbing gourd. Only the surest of hands
can create the perfect balance between the bitterness of these vegetables
and the seasonings, which include ground ginger, poppy-seed paste, and
the typical Bengali five-spice mix called panchphoron. The right touch
of ghee, added before the dish is removed from the stove, intensifies its
unique flavor.

You certainly won’t find shukto coexisting with chicken tikka masala
in Indian restaurants abroad. Even in Bengal, it is essentially a home-
cooked item. But like fish head, it is a cultural marker, identifying a re¬
gional palate. It is also an acquired taste, like beer, and for those who have
acquired it, there is no better starter to a leisurely, multicourse midday
meal. Shukto probably got its honored status in Bengali Hindu gastron¬
omy in medieval times, with the spreading of the Bhakti movement,
preached by a charismatic figure named Chaitanya who emphasized non¬
violence, equality, and, in terms of food, vegetarianism. He also happened
to be personally fond of dishes containing shukuta (dried neem leaves).
Two biographies written by his contemporaries provide detailed descrip¬
tions of the vegetarian meals served to Chaitanya by his devotees, and
quote at length from his discourses on the benefits of vegetables, espe¬
cially the wide variety of greens that flourish in tropical Bengal.

The vegetarianism didn’t last long in a land of fish lovers (except
among a small group); but a distinctive and elaborate vegetarian cuisine,
which developed during the peak of the Bhakti movement, still survives,
delighting both vegetarians and aficionados of fish and meat. To compen¬
sate for the lack of protein and to add taste and body to vegetarian dishes,
Bengalis often use dried pellets of ground dal, called boris (wadis in
Hindi). In rural Bengal, making boris became both a ritual and an art.
Women would bathe, wear fresh clothes, and grind large quantities of dal
of different varieties with water on the grinding stones that were essential

EATING INDIA

equipment in every kitchen. Once the dal had been made into a paste,
and salt and seasonings added to it, the women would take two big hand¬
fuls and set them out on a clean cloth to dry in the sun. These were
called the Old Man and the Old Woman, and were meant to be symbolic
offerings to the gods—a common gesture of appeasement in many kinds
of food preparation. The rest of the dal was whipped for greater smooth¬
ness of texture, and small pellets of it were set out on large mats or pieces
of cloth to dry in the autumn and winter sun. Once dried, they could be
stored for many months. The mark of a gifted bori-maker was in the
airiness of the consistency she achieved through whipping the dal paste.
Some boris, made with milled urad dal, were called phul-boris and were
almost of meringuelike consistency. They were good enough to eat by
themselves, after being deep-fried. Sadly, this art, along with many other
delicate kitchen skills, has almost disappeared. Boris are usually mass-
produced these days, and the drying process takes place inside an oven,
not under the natural warmth of the Bengali sun.

The foundation of many Bengali vegetarian dishes, which strikingly
differ in taste and flavor from those of other Indian regions, is to be found
in the unique application of delicate yet unmistakable spices. Perhaps the
most indispensable is the mixture called panchphoron (five flavorings), a
combination of whole nigella, cumin, mustard, fennel, and fenugreek, in
equal proportions. Thrown into heated oil, with one or two dried red
chilies, the spices emit an inimitable aroma that indicates the presence of
a Bengali kitchen, whether in London or New York, or Bengal itself. Gin¬
ger, black pepper, and ground mustard provided varying levels of pi¬
quancy until the sixteenth century, when the chili pepper was introduced
by the Portuguese traders and adopted enthusiastically by Bengali cooks.
Today, it is hard to imagine almost any vegetable preparation without the
green fire of fresh chilies, slit in the middle, the seeds left intact.

One of my personal favorites, the seed of the opium poppy, also has
a foreign connection. It is used in other cuisines, but its prolific, enthu¬
siastic, even single-minded utilization is only to be seen in Bengal, espe¬
cially in the westernmost areas of West Bengal, bordering on the state of
Bihar. Indians discovered opium as a narcotic in the eleventh and twelfth

BENGAL: LAND OF A THOUSAND RIVERS

centuries from Arab traders who had learned about it from the Greeks.
The drug itself is extracted from the latex of the poppy’s seedpods, and
the tiny, kidney-shaped white seeds have no narcotic effect, since they
form only after the seedpod has dried up. For centuries, these seeds were
simply a byproduct of the opium generation process. Their chief culi¬
nary application was in Islamic recipes for meat and chicken in which
poppy-seed paste was used to thicken sauces and lend texture, the way
flour is in a roux.

Things changed after the British East India Company, having dis¬
lodged Bengal’s last nawab in 1757, established a stronghold over the
province, a vast, fertile area that included the modern Indian states of Bi¬
har and Orissa. Having discovered that opium could generate huge prof¬
its not only in the Indian market but also in China (where it was a
prohibited commodity), and that Bengali opium was of higher quality
than that grown in western India, the British forced Bengali farmers to
convert all their arable land to poppy cultivation; food crops were brought
in from neighboring areas. With narcotic supplies thus ensured, the
British carried on an illegal trade, smuggling opium into China and rak¬
ing up huge profits. In the 1820s, the Chinese emperor Tao-Kuang tried
to restrict the import of opium, but the British fought back. The First
Opium War, which raged from 1839 to 1842, ended in China’s defeat, re¬
sulting in the humiliating Treaty of Nanking. In 1856, the Second
Opium War began. After being defeated again, the Chinese responded by
legalizing opium cultivation in their country. As a result, the profits of
smuggling Bengali opium were disastrously reduced, and, by the early
twentieth century, the British trade in the drug was governed by interna¬
tionally ratified treaties and regulations. One of Britain’s best-known
writers, interestingly, whose books denounced powerful, exploitative sys¬
tems, was born in 1903 to a civil servant who supervised opium produc¬
tion in a town called Motihari, in the Champaran area of Bihar. He was
christened Eric Arthur Blair, but the world knows him as George Orwell.

Meanwhile, on the sidelines of drug-running, war, and colonial ma¬
nipulations, the Bengali culinary imagination had found extensive appli¬
cations for the enormous quantities of poppy seeds, called posto in

EATING INDIA

Bengali, that had suddenly become available. Posto’s delicate, almost
herbal flavor complements vegetables like jhingey (a ridged, zucchini-like
gourd), potatoes, or eggplant. Combined with ground mustard, it makes a
delicious sauce for fish, while the addition of tamarind allows it to be
made into a tangy ambal (sour chutney). Whipped together with ground
coconut and chopped green chilies, it is the raw material for crisp fritters
that go down well with afternoon tea or as a side dish at lunchtime. Best
of all, however, is the uncooked posto-bata—large quantities of posto,
soaked in water, ground to a fine paste on a stone, whipped up with mus¬
tard oil, salt, and chopped green chilies, and eaten as a first course with
rice. In the perishing heat of the summer, posto cools the body like few
other things. An added bonus is its slightly soporific effect, which deep¬
ens the postlunch siesta for an ease-loving Bengali.

Over the years. I’ve often been nonplussed by the eating habits of
American friends I’ve invited to dinner. Having spent the better part of
a day, or even two, preparing an elaborate Bengali meal, I assume that
guests will eat the way I’ve always been used to, a bit of everything, but
in sequence, with portions of rice. Instead, many of my friends tend to
heap all the items on their plate, mix them up, and proceed with dinner
in a haphazard fashion.

“How can you possibly taste the differences between items?” I
protest.

They assure me they do.

“How can you go back to vegetables after eating a big portion of
richly spiced meat?” I say.

“Why not,” they say, “if we feel like it?”

That, in a nutshell, is the difference between the long-established
eating culture of Bengal and the easygoing pattern of meals in America.

The Bengali meal, whether it is a wedding banquet or an ordinary
day’s repast, is structured in a sequence. Plain boiled rice is the staple, and
is mixed with a bit of each dish as you progress through the meal; in a tra¬
ditional wedding feast, you may additionally be served pilaf and/or luchis
(puffed bread) to eat with meat and fish. A bitter dish, such as shukto or

BENGAL: LAND OF A THOUSAND RIVERS

neem-begun (eggplant braised with neem leaves), is always eaten first. If
none is served, you start with one or more fried vegetables with dal. This
may be followed by a complex vegetable dish, perhaps banana blossom
combined with diced potatoes, chickpeas, and ground coconut, which my
mother made for me so often. Then comes the fish course, almost a daily
dish. While there are numerous ways that Bengalis cook fish, the best
known is the jhol, as unique to Bengal as bouillabaisse is to France. Pieces
of fish, such as carp; vegetables like potatoes, eggplants, and the small
gourdlike patol; and boris (which plump up and absorb the delectable fla¬
vor and juice of the jhol) are all combined in a thin, flavorful broth. Mus¬
tard oil, which reduces fishy odors, is the favored cooking medium, not
only for fish but also vegetables. Like shukto, jhol is a paradox, its simplic¬
ity belying the trickiness of achieving a perfect balance between flavor and
spiciness. When meat (Hindus eat chicken and goat; Muslims also eat
beef) is part of a meal, it always comes after fish. As for dessert, Bengalis
have an extensive array to choose from, including a slew of items unique
to the region.

This basic Bengali meal can be considerably extended by the addi¬
tion of small tidbits, variations in the dais served, a sequence of complex
vegetable dishes, time-consuming digressions involving fish heads, rich
pilafs to go with the meat, and tart concoctions of seasonal fruits that
precede the dessert. Matching the bounty of nature, the region has de¬
veloped an epicureanism that stems from leisure, imagination, the prac¬
tice of creating meals around the offerings of the seasons, and the notion
of food as both art and pleasure.

As in most other societies, religion plays a big part in Bengali food.
The Muslim festivals are celebrated with pilafs, biryanis, kebabs, meats in
rich sauces, and desserts—items similar to those served by Muslims all
over India. In general, the cooking of Muslim Bengalis tends to focus
less on vegetables than on meat, and the use of onion and garlic is pro¬
nounced. Among Hindus, ritual beliefs are strong and influence the se¬
lection of foods on different occasions. While elaborate meals mark
sacred and secular festivals, specific foods acquire special significance on
different occasions. During periods of mourning, complex rituals are

EATING INDIA

accompanied by severely abstemious meals prepared with austerity. After
my grandfather’s death, I observed his children being served a one-
course meal of rice and vegetables cooked in a clay pot, the only season¬
ing allowed being a few teaspoons of ghee and a bit of sea salt. In
traditional homes, numerous rules—even more complex than those re¬
lated to keeping kosher—govern the purity of foods, the proximity of
certain items, and the permissibility of vegetarian and nonvegetarian
foods on different occasions for different people. Much of this lore,
along with the art of cooking elaborate and seasonal meals, is slowly
vanishing. Families have traded the inheritance of culinary and cultural
traditions for the freedom of being nuclear and mobile.

Perched on a stool in the garage turned kitchen of the house in Salt
Lake, 1 watched the old man pour out shukto into a large container and
marveled at his strength. With hardly a pause for rest, he lifted one of
his enormous woks onto the stove and pulled forward a tray containing
rows of cleaned parshey, one of Bengal’s favorite fishes. Usually eight to
ten inches long, these slender silvery beauties are cooked whole.

“What kind of sauce are you making for them?” 1 asked as he quickly
dusted the fish with salt and turmeric powder.

He pulled out a plate containing dollops of freshly ground spices
and pointed to mustard and posto. In the wok, the mustard oil heated up
and released its characteristic aroma. The old man threw in a pinch of
whole nigella seeds and several split green chilies before putting in the
fish, sauteing them, and adding the spices. Leaving the contents of the
wok to simmer gently, he began to organize ingredients for making sev¬
eral vegetable dishes. A little later, as he transferred the fish to a large
enamel serving bowl, the heady smell of ground mustard and green
chilies brought back the redolence of meals 1 had eaten during earlier
visits from America. My father was still alive then, and my journeys were
filled with anticipation, of the food he would buy from the market and
the delightful dishes my mother would make for us to share. Parshey
being a favorite of mine, my father always bought some for my first
lunch—fat, oily specimens, their bellies bulging with roe, cooked in a

BENGAL: LAND OF A THOUSAND RIVERS

pungent mustard sauce similar to the one that I had just watched being
made by the old man.

There are more varieties of freshwater fish in Bengal than weeks in a
year—or there were, according to narratives written as late as the mid¬
nineteenth century—and these were to be found all over the land. Poor
peasants who had no money to spend in the market could simply wander
out to the paddy fields during the monsoon and pick up handfuls of small
fish from the standing water. The so-called climbing perch, moving across
land in search of water when lakes or ponds dried up in the summer, also
became food for the finder. But as in so many countries, the growth of
population, habitation, pollution, and overfishing has left its mark on
Bengal. In urban markets, fish is now an expensive commodity. Mythol¬
ogy, however, dies hard in the collective memory, and there are several
species on which the Bengalis have lavished imagination, affection, sym¬
bolism, and desire in equal measure. The large rui—especially the head,
which is part of the ceremonial meal made for the son-in-law every
summer—and giant prawns both fall into that category. But perhaps no
other fish arouses as much emotion across the board as ilish—the Bengali
shad, which the British called hilsa.

The mystique of the hilsa can be understood only in the context of
a larger Bengal that was split into two by the 1947 Partition of India—
West Bengal (in India), and East Pakistan, which later became the coun¬
try of Bangladesh. For the inhabitants of pre-Partition Bengal, the only
line of demarcation between east and west was the geographical line of
the River Padma. The people on the eastern side were called Bangals
and those on the western side were Ghotis—both jocular terms used to
convey rivalry, derision, superiority, and plain difference. Over time, the
division was further reinforced by demographics, Muslims forming the
majority in East Bengal, and Hindus in the west. Cooking techniques
and food preferences reflected both religious and subregional differ¬
ences. However, a common bond of culture and language persisted
through the centuries, creating a unique Bengali identity recognizable
all over the subcontinent. Rice and fish remained the ideal Bengali meal
on both sides of the border.

EATING INDIA

Nothing exemplifies this Bengali identity better than the region’s
love affair with hilsa. The two major rivers in the east and the west, the
Padma and the Ganges respectively, have always been the prime sources
for this fish, which begins life in estuarine waters and then moves up¬
river to spawn. During my school and college years in Calcutta, I often
heard heated discussions between members of my family (rooted in West
Bengal for countless generations) and their friends and colleagues who
had migrated from East Bengal, about which was superior in flavor and
taste—the hilsa from the Ganges (that we swore by) or the one from the
Padma. But this was a minor difference. There was absolute, indissoluble
agreement over the fact that no fish can rival the hilsa’s exquisite flavor
or delectably tender flesh, not the large rui with its ceremonial and rit¬
ual status, nor the giant prawn with its rich, coral-filled head, nor the
myriad other specimens that fill the waters of Bengal. In appearance,
too, it had the edge, a full-grown specimen being nearly two feet in
length, its small silver scales shimmering vividly, its eyes like pale blue
gemstones even in death.

To me, hilsa is both a memory of joyful family meals and a symbol
of loss. It is a fish that is strongly linked to the Bengalis’ seasonal appre¬
ciation of food. The first drenching downpours of the monsoon, when
all creatures stir back to life after the searing, draining torpor of sum¬
mer, are celebrated with that classic Bengali meal—khichuri (rice and
dal cooked together, flavored with ghee, ginger, and whole garain
masala) and freshly caught hilsa. On other days during the monsoon,
when the plump, kidney-shaped roe (much like shad roe in appearance)
is available, it is gently dusted with salt and turmeric and sauteed in
mustard oil to be eaten with plain rice. As for the fish itself, recipes for
hilsa are too numerous to document, with families each adding their in¬
dividual quirky touches.

Like banana blossoms, hilsa was also an item with which my mother
sometimes constructed an entire meal. We started with a few pieces of
fried fish and hilsa roe. But the plain rice was enlivened by pouring over
it the oil in which these had been fried—the bare teaspoon of mustard
oil in the pan usually increasing to half a cup with the rendered fat from

BENGAL: LAND OF A THOUSAND RIVERS

the fish. The head came next, fried, broken up into pieces, and com¬
bined with the leaves and stems of a green called pui. The bulk of the
fish was divided into two portions, one cooked with a ground mustard
paste, its pungency merging into that of the mustard oil, the other
(bonier portions of the back) made either into a jhal with hot red chili
paste, or an ambal with tamarind pulp.

The likelihood of such meals has dwindled almost to the point of
nonexistence, not only for me in the absence of my parental home, but
also for the region. The severely polluted Ganges is producing fewer and
fewer fish, and very few of these are allowed to reach full-bodied matu¬
rity. In recent years, every time I have visited the fish markets of Cal¬
cutta and asked about hilsa, the vendors point to specimens that have
been imported from Bangladesh—the hilsa from the Padma that is big¬
ger in size, and yet, to the West Bengali, deficient in taste and flavor. And
even those may soon disappear as Bangladesh keeps exporting large
quantities of frozen hilsa to Europe and America for eager Bengali
expatriates. Bengali tradition, based on the ecological awareness that
comes with an agricultural way of life, imposed a ban on eating hilsa
during the crucial months of late spring and summer, thus allowing the
fish to grow, mate, and spawn. But the urge to consume, in an age when
technology can fly things from one corner of the earth to another, is too
powerful to be stemmed by such considerations. This graceful “darling
of the waters” may well be doomed to an existence only in memory and
legend.

A rising crescendo of voices, rapid footsteps, and the loud blowing of
conch shells—the auspicious sound that drives away all evil influences—
shook me out of my remembrances of things past. The tatto (gifts from
the bridegroom’s family to the bride) was being brought out. As the
procession of relatives emerged, I left the garage and went up to admire
the large trays holding cosmetics, jewelry, decorative objects, saris, kur-
tas, packaged nuts and dried fruits, and covered terra-cotta pots filled
with sweets and sweet yogurt. Artfully decorated with colored paper, red
cloth, and gold ribbons, the assembly of gifts gladdened not only my eye

EATING INDIA

but also my heart. Even if the hilsa’s demise was imminent, at least this
beautiful custom from the vanished world of my childhood had sur¬
vived. I looked for the tray containing the whole rui fish and, sure
enough, it was there, though its dimensions fell far short of the one I re¬
membered from my aunt’s wedding.

Once the gifts had been loaded into several waiting cars and the
party had driven off, I went inside the house to see the groom. In the
Bengali marriage market, he had been an eligible bachelor, with a well-
paid job as the marketing director for a multinational corporation. He
was waiting upstairs for lunch to be brought up. While the rest of us
would eat the meal cooked by the hired chef in the garage, the groom
was allowed only a ritually pure meal that his female relatives, after
bathing and wearing fresh clothes, were preparing in the family kitchen.
Dressed in a set of new clothes, his forehead decorated with patterns in
sandalwood paste, a thick garland of marigolds round his neck, he sat
waiting patiently on a square piece of carpet. Following tradition, the
meal would be set before him on the floor, which had already been
washed thoroughly. This very early lunch was to be his last meal until
the wedding rituals were completed late in the evening. When he saw
me, he smiled shyly. I imagined he looked very different in his office,
wearing a suit and tie instead of the traditional Bengali dhuti-panjabi,
projecting authority and decision. Here, on this important day, he had
to be a passive recipient of the gestures of ceremony, faith, ritual, and
affection.

I sat down beside him and we chatted inconsequentially, until the
United States was mentioned.

“I’d like to go there, someday,” he said. “But I wouldn’t want to live
there. Don’t you ever regret living in a foreign country?”

“It doesn’t feel foreign anymore,” I said.

He nodded, but I was not sure he believed me.

“Did you always think you’d have an arranged marriage?” I asked,
emboldened by his question.

“I wasn’t sure, at least not while I was a student, when I did go out
with a couple of girls. Later, after I started working, my family began to

BENGAL: LAND OF A THOUSAND RIVERS

talk about marriage. At first, I was reluctant, but then I saw some of my
friends getting married. Those were arranged marriages, and they seemed
very happy. I’m the last one in our group to marry. I think it’s a good de¬
cision. My parents know what’s best for me because they know me better
than anyone else. And it’s not as if I’m marrying a total stranger. We’ve
been introduced; we’ve met a few times.”

I thought of my own rebellious generation, the way some of us had
fought our families’ decisions, thrust aside family involvement or advice.
I remembered the peculiar sense of envy with which I had sometimes
envisioned the youth of the future—much less hobbled by convention,
bolder and more independent in making decisions. But things don’t
change the way you expect them to. Despite their addiction to MTV,
blogs, iPods, cell phones, tight jeans, burgers from McDonald’s, and
mushroom pizzas from Domino’s, the instinct for caution and conform¬
ity apparently remains strong in today’s young people when it comes to
the important decisions of life.

The sound of conch shells again: three women, the groom’s aunts,
were coming up the stairs, carrying the food. It was a strictly vegetarian
meal, untouched even by a whiff of fish. Nor could cooked rice be a
part of it. That daily staple, without which life is unimaginable in Ben¬
gal, is omitted from most ritual meals except during the ceremony of
Annaprasan, “first rice,” when a six-month-old infant is fed his or her
first grains of cooked rice. When any other ceremony does require rice,
it is usually in the form of popped rice or dried rice flakes. The women
placed before the groom a gleaming silver plate and several silver bowls
filled with different items. On the plate was a stack of pale golden
luchis, fried disks of fine white flour, puffed up like balloons and emit¬
ting the aroma of pure ghee. Once again, I was swept away from the
present to a distant childhood when my mother’s luchis, light as air,
were one of my favorite foods. During my early years in America, one
of the beckoning pleasures of going home was the prospect of sitting in
my mother’s kitchen to watch her knead the dough, roll it out into small
disks, and fry them one by one. After the first five or six were done, she

EATING INDIA

would pick one up and hand it to me. Few gastronomic experiences
equal the unalloyed pleasure of piercing the top skin of the luchi with
your finger, letting out the hot, fragrant air, tearing off a bit, and putting
it in your mouth for a slow, heavenly dissolution.

The young groom wrapped half a luchi around a portion of slow-
cooked potatoes in a tamarind-chili-asafetida sauce, and put it in his
mouth. As he chewed, a smile of relish lit up his face—probably the way
my face did when I tasted my mother’s luchis—making it seem even
younger. The women looked at each other and laughed, as if they were
relieved that the surrogate god for the day had approved of what they
had prepared and offered to him. Eagerly, they helped him to other
items—a thick dal flecked with coconut and ginger chips and exuding
the aroma of garam masala, several other vegetable dishes, and the oblig¬
atory finale of yogurt and sweets.

Halfway through the meal, a further commotion of people and cars
downstairs announced the arrival of the reciprocal tatto sent from the
bride’s family. This, too, included a large rui fish, and the women around
me excitedly chattered about the fish head that the chef downstairs
would cook with roasted moong dal.

The hired chef was a master of efficiency and skill, but we started
lunch much later than I had expected. The excellence of the cooking,
however, provided more than ample compensation. It had been many
years since I had eaten such an elaborate traditional meal. The shukto was
followed by fried eggplant slices, pumpkin-flower fritters, fried julienned
potatoes, and a highly seasoned dish of shredded cabbage, cubed potatoes,
and green peas. After that came dal with the fish head, which was a major
enterprise to eat, but entirely worth it. Then we sampled the delicate
parshey in mustard-poppy-seed sauce, followed by a more highly seasoned
dish of shrimp combined with shredded coconut and ground mustard.
The final item was a rich, garam masala-infused kalia, made with pieces
of the carp. No meat was served—a wise decision, I felt, since the eve¬
ning’s catered feast was bound to include chicken and goat meat. Instead,
we ended with two favorite Bengali desserts, mishti doi and sandesh.

BENGAL: LAND OF A THOUSAND RIVERS

Doi, as yogurt is called in Bengali, is universal food. It is used
throughout India—in the north for raita and lassi, in the south for making
curd-rice—and eaten plain everywhere, either as a digestive or as a cool¬
ing food in summer, mixed with fruit and rice flakes. It is used for mari¬
nating and cooking meat and has auspicious connotations in Hindu
religious rituals. But probably no other culture has made it into a dessert
that is not only sweet, but soothing, emollient, and deeply satisfying. Even
the lactose-intolerant may find it worth the risk of eating the Bengali
mishti doi (literally, sweet yogurt). It bears little resemblance to the break¬
fast yogurt of America or Europe, which is sweetened with the addition
of fruit preserves or flavored with coffee or vanilla. Made in terra-cotta
pots with rich evaporated milk and yogurt cultures, Bengali mishti doi
has a custardlike consistency, often with a thick, extra-creamy layer on
top called matha. Only a whisper of the natural tartness of yogurt can be
tasted, yet it is not in the least cloying. Mishti doi is rarely made at home,
the domestic cook having long realized that the professional product is far
superior. Each of Calcutta’s legendary sweetshops has a particular style of
making mishti doi; each is delicious. One of the best known, fancifully
named Payodhi (literally, the ocean of milk) by the poet Rabindranath
Tagore, is made by a confectionary called Jalajoga.

Sandesh is another unique Bengali creation, made with fresh cottage
cheese (chhana), which is kneaded until it reaches the appropriate
consistency—again, a skill better achieved by the professional confec¬
tioner. The kneaded chhana is cooked with sugar into different types of
consistencies to make different types of sandesh. The soft sandesh or
kanchagolla sold near the Kalighat temple in Calcutta is extraordinarily
delicious. Some confectioners may flavor their product with lemon,
mango, or saffron. Sandesh in which the chhana has been cooked to a
harder and drier consistency, called karapaker sandesh, tends to keep
better and travels well. Bengalis have a custom of carrying a box of
these sweets when going to visit someone either after a long interval or
with the purpose of delivering some pleasant news, such as an impend¬
ing wedding or the birth of a child. There is a linguistic serendipity in

EATING INDIA

the fact that the word sandesh not only denotes a sweet, it also means
“news” in both Bengali and its mother language, Sanskrit.

After lunch, as the younger people gathered in one of the rooms and the
others simply lolled in their chairs, overcome with a pleasant lethargy, I
decided to make a temporary escape from Salt Lake. I would go back to
the apartment my husband and I had inherited from his parents, at the
other end of town in Ballygunge. After the excitements of the day, the
sumptuousness of the lunch, and the many memories that had buffeted
me throughout, I almost wished the wedding ceremony could be post¬
poned, so that I could have a relaxed and solitary evening. The thought
of eating again, and that also to be a catered feast heavy on spices, lipids,
and proteins, was intimidating.

Had it been possible for me to choose, I would have ended the long
day with a late-night meal consisting of tiny portions of what Bengalis
consider comfort food, which my mother always made impeccably—
rice, dal, and mashed potatoes. It is a simple, delectable, nutritious meal,
but only those who have the gift can elevate it to art. The rice in this
case is not the well-known basmati, but a Bengali variety called gobind-
abhog (literally, food for Gobinda, another name for the god Krishna).
Its tiny grains emit a distinctive aroma that is further enhanced if you
add a little bit of ghee to your portion just before eating. The dal I
longed for was the red lentils that are commonly eaten in Bengal,
though not so much in other parts of India. Lentils can be cooked in a
hundred different ways but when I needed comfort, my mother always
made her exquisitely delicate version, flavored solely with salt, ghee, and
slit green chilies that had been blended into the dal to impart their heat
and fragrance. As for the mashed potatoes—aloo bhatey or aloo bharta,
depending on which side of the Bengali divide you came from—the
Bengalis have come up with a sharp, zestful version that owes nothing to
milk, butter, or broth, and everything to pungent mustard oil, chopped
green chilies, and, optionally, chopped onions. The potato came to India
with the Portuguese, but was slow in being accepted in the Indian

BENGAL: LAND OF A THOUSAND RIVERS

kitchen where several native varieties of taro and sweet potatoes pro¬
vided starch, texture, and volume to daily meals. But the South Ameri¬
can tuber was popularized during British colonial rule in India, and it is
now fair to say that no other region in India glories in using potatoes
(by themselves or in combination with other vegetables, fish, and meat)
as much as Bengal. Of all the potato concoctions that the regional imag¬
ination has come up with, nothing satisfies more than this spirited mash.

Of course, there was no prospect of the fantasies about my mother’s
cooking turning into reality: she had stayed back home in Cambridge.
Instead, I made a pot of tea to revive myself and, after drinking it, went
for a long, rambling walk in the direction of Gariahat, a well-known
shopping and residential area in south Calcutta. I had several hours for
solo entertainment, since the wedding ceremony would not take place
until much later in the evening. Under a winter sun, aslant and gentle, I
watched chattering children and giggling teenagers coming home from
school and remembered similar afternoon meanderings with my friends.

On the way home from school we often made a detour to a little
park where our two favorite street-food purveyors did business. One
served the quintessentially Bengali snack, mashla-niuri. Puffed rice (muri)
was expertly tossed up with finely chopped onion and green chilies,
roasted brown chickpeas (also called Bengal gram), tiny pieces of co¬
conut, mustard oil, salt, and a swirl of thin tamarind paste. The man had
an uncanny sense of proportion and knew exactly how much to make for
four or five or six customers. Once the mixing was done to his satisfac¬
tion, he poured out the mashla-muri into paper cones—filling each right
to the brim—and handed them to us. We resumed our walk, munching
happily, eyes watering from the chilies, noses quivering with the sharpness
of the mustard oil, tongues shivering from the intensity of tamarind.

Mashla-muri, in some form or other, has been part of Bengali eating
forever. But for our other mouthwatering treat, we were indebted to the
immigrants from northern India who had made Calcutta their home. The
basic element of this concoction was a tiny sphere of fried dough, tautly
crisp outside and hollow inside. It goes by several names—golegappa, pa-
nipuri, phuchka—all of them Hindi, and is commonly eaten stuffed with

EATING INDIA

spiced potatoes and dipped in tamarind water, once per mouthful. But the
snack we loved, called churmur, went one step further. The spicy pota¬
toes (often mixed with crushed chickpeas) were tossed with tamarind
water and a touch of mustard oil, mixed thoroughly with several handfuls
of crumbled phuchkas, and heaped on a dried shaal leaf—a commonly
used disposable plate. More phuchkas were crumbled and sprinkled on
top. A smaller portion of leaf was stuck into the pile, to serve as a mal¬
leable spoon, and off we went, happily gorging ourselves.

This afternoon, I slowed down to watch a group of schoolgirls and
felt irrationally gratified when they stopped in front of a vendor for
mashla-muri. Another group, a little farther off, opted for aloo-kabli, or
potatoes and chickpeas cooked and tossed with roasted cumin—red chili
powder and lemon juice. During recent visits, I had not seen any of the
street vendors selling the churmur we so loved, but phuchkas were still
as popular as they used to be. It occurred to me that even in street food,
the Bengali propensity for adopting and adapting was evident long be¬
fore the advent of the Punjabi restaurants and Western fast-food chains.
The American motto I had fallen in love with and internalized during
my years as an immigrant—Change is good—could equally be a Bengali
or even an Indian one when it came to food. The facade of unyielding
traditionalism is just that—a facade. So is the idea of unmitigated re¬
gionalism. In reality, curiosity, experimentation, and metamorphosis all
are at work. The only thing to fear is that the more artful elements of
cuisine—whether on the street or in the kitchen—might vanish from
lack of time, patience, and, most of all, enthusiasm, which is crucial to
the preparation of good food.

“Look at these, Didi, see how beautiful they are? Why don’t you buy
some?

Didi. Elder sister. I live in dread of the day when shopkeepers, stall
owners, or sidewalk salesmen will make the inevitable transition and call
me Mashima, or Aunt, carelessly pushing me up the generation ladder.
But not yet; at least, not this time.

I had inadvertently stopped in front of a sidewalk flower seller,
many of whom buy small consignments from wholesalers in the big

BENGAL: LAND OF A THOUSAND RIVERS

market and try to get the custom of the passersby. The man was point¬
ing to a huge bucket filled with water in which stood bunches of
tuberoses. The fragrance was intense and beautiful, although the real
season for tuberoses was the monsoon. I let myself be tempted and
bought a dozen tall stems to take back to the apartment.

By the time I got back to Salt Lake and found the rented hall where the
wedding was taking place, it was past eight o’clock and the ceremony was
in progress. The chief actors—the groom, the bride, and her father—were
sitting on a carpet underneath a red and white canopy, along with two
priests. The bride, a glittering figure in red silk, gold jewelry, and flower
garlands, was being given away by her father, a priest guiding them
through Sanskrit mantras and ritual gestures. While the faces of the young
couple were vibrant with happy expectation, the father of the bride
looked tired. Very likely, he had followed tradition and fasted all day and
prayed to the gods for the future happiness of the couple. Hinduism, like
Catholicism, has room for plenty of fasting and, in Bengal, the traditional
calendar is dotted with occasions for rigorous self-denial, though there are
no prolonged periods of fasting like the Islamic month of Ramadan.

The wedding went on. The father got up and left, having given
away his daughter with the endowment of the proper dowry and re¬
nounced all claims on her. From now on, her husband would be respon¬
sible for her livelihood or, as the Bengalis put it, “rice and clothes.” After
many rituals and offerings of flowers, prayers, and incense to gods and
ancestors, it was time for the most spectacular part of the ceremony,
where food plays a pivotal part. A priest built a fire with jute sticks in a
large copper vessel, for the bridal couple to make a series of offerings.
The first item was khoi (popped rice). As two pairs of hands held the
clay bowl filled with khoi and tipped it forward, a shower of white
poured out and the flames leapt high with a whooshing sound as if Agni,
the god of fire, was signifying his pleasure at the offering. Next in line
was a bunch of small sweet-and-sour bananas that have sacred connota¬
tions in Bengal. After that came a plateful of cut fruit and another one
of sweets. Agni was being generously nourished.

EATING INDIA

At the end of the ceremony, the pair made their way to another part
of the room where a plate of sweets was set before them. Each broke off
a piece to feed the other. As they did so, amid much laughter and jubila¬
tion, I watched the tenderness with which the groom brushed the crumbs
from the bride’s lips and hoped they would share their lives without any
unbearable conflict or misunderstanding. My earlier conversation with
the groom about having an arranged marriage came back to me. Comfort
and security were not the only benefits of going along with your family’s
wishes. Participating in age-old rituals, in which the first step toward inti¬
macy was through food, opened up a rich sense of possibility—of desire
aroused, desire gratified, perhaps even a kind of love that nonconformists
cannot imagine.

It was time to visit the banquet room where the wedding feast was
still going on. As I had anticipated, this banquet bore no resemblance to
the kind of food we had eaten for lunch that very day, or to my aunt’s
wedding feast on a banana leaf. With time, a kind of internal globaliza¬
tion had shaped the modern banquet. Instead of hewing solely to Ben¬
gali traditions, it had come to include many northern Indian dishes that
were so popular in restaurants. The naan and navratan korma, the pako-
ras and raita, the rice pilaf and chicken tikka masala were all items that
would be familiar not only to Indians, but to Westerners who have eaten
in Indian restaurants. These were further supplemented by Chinese
chow mein and South Indian dosa and sambhar. I confess I was some¬
what disheartened. After the extraordinary lunch, this catered feast,
however generously presented, did not arouse hunger. I decided to qui¬
etly slip away and go back to my apartment.

But as I went to say good-bye to the married couple, one of the
groom’s aunts came hurrying after me.

“Surely,” she panted, “you’re not going to leave without eating
something?”

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

“Oh, but you have to eat something. You must. Otherwise, it will
bring them bad luck. You know that.”

Of course. How could I have forgotten? The unfed, and, by

BENGAL: LAND OF A THOUSAND RIVERS

implication, slighted guest is a dire image that haunts all families who
are celebrating an important occasion. In the Hindu code of hospitality,
the guest is considered the equivalent of a god, and no deity can be al¬
lowed to leave without having accepted something. Even in this unbe¬
lieving modern age, a host will generally insist that even a casual visitor
not leave without having a bit of food—sweets, cookies, samosas, any¬
thing available. I was about to retrace my steps back to the banquet
room, when she gestured to me to wait. In a few minutes, she came back
from the room where the newlyweds were sitting with their friends,
waiting to eat dinner at the end of their long day. In her hands she car¬
ried a box with the logo of a famous sweetshop.

“Here,” she said with a smile, “this is for you to take home. But
break off just a little bit of sandesh and put it in your mouth before you
leave. I know it can be difficult to eat a big meal when you’re tired. And
it’s been a long day, hasn’t it?”

I smiled back at her and ate half a sandesh. It was the perfect solu¬
tion. Thanking her for the gift of sweets, I then said good-bye to the
bridal pair and the rest of the family. Halfway down the stairs, I looked
back. Dinner had finally been brought to the young people. The groom
was serving some rice pilaf onto the bride’s plate; she was looking down
with a shy smile.

Back in the apartment, I put the box of sandesh in the refrigerator
and collapsed onto the couch. CNN International was airing a news
magazine, but instead of following the pictures on the screen, my mind
kept getting crowded by the images of the day, particularly the flamboy¬
ant meeting of food and fire, sanctioning the union between a man and a
woman standing together. No matter how much I tried to imagine it, I
would never know what it was like to have a relationship cemented with
such time-tested rites. But even as I wondered if I had any regrets, I knew
the answer. Tradition and ritual had always aesthetically appealed to me,
and the cultural context even provided me with comfort, but I had never
been able to define myself through their observance. If anything, it was
my native Bengali food that gave me the strongest sense of identity.

Chapter Two

In Pursuit of the Portuguese:
From Bengal to Goa

Early next morning, I made a pot of tea and took out a saffron-flavored
sandesh from the box given to me by the bridegroom’s aunt. Sandesh is
not really one of my favorite sweets but, along with rosogolla, it holds
top billing in the gallery of Bengali desserts. It is impossible to visit any
city in Bengal without being offered one or both of these. Both are
made with chhana (cottage cheese), but sandesh is dry, whereas rosogolla
(literally, ball of syrup), as its name implies, is a sphere of chhana that is
cooked in mildly sweet syrup. It is supposed to have been invented (per¬
haps through a happy accident) by a nineteenth-century confectioner

IN PURSUIT OF THE PORTUGUESE

named Nobin Chandra Das, whose son, K. C. Das, opened the epony¬
mous Calcutta shop in the 1930s, a shop that still survives.

Like most Bengalis, 1 had always assumed that these and a host of
other chhana-based sweets had evolved out of the regional imagination,
until I came across the theory that the Bengalis had learned to make
them from the Portuguese who settled around the Bay of Bengal in the
seventeenth century. It was a startling, almost incredible idea. In India,
the Portuguese presence is linked so vividly to the west coast—Vasco da
Gama landed in Calicut in May 1498, Goa became a Portuguese terri¬
tory in 1510 and remained so until 1961—that their arrival and acti¬
vities on the east coast are easily obscured, the more so because of the
larger role played there by the British, the French, even the Dutch. To
think of the Portuguese having a hand, however indirectly, in the evolu¬
tion of these quintessential Bengali sweets was like being told that the
French had taught us to make shukto. And how often had I, the Bengali
food writer, described these items as being the true, authentic product of
Bengal?

Sweets are a major part of eating in India. North to south, east to
west—the subcontinent is one gigantic sweet tooth, constantly demand¬
ing gratification. Not only are sweets eaten as dessert to conclude a
meal, as they are in the West, they can appear right in the middle of
a meal in areas like Gujarat and Rajasthan, be served at breakfast and at
teatime, and be eagerly consumed as snacks at any time of day, as candy
is in the West. The extensive availability of street food in Indian cities
and towns plays into this. Morning and afternoon, confectioners can be
seen frying jilebis (descended from the Arabic zalabiya) and imratis, crisp
yellow and orange sweets made by squeezing lentil-based batter into hot
oil in convoluted patterns and soaking the resulting fried pieces briefly
in syrup. As for sweetshops, while Calcutta appears to have the highest
ratio of number per square mile, every city has more than enough to
destroy the willpower of the moderately abstemious passerby. Home
cooks contribute their portion to the family, rice pudding being the
universal favorite, followed by a variety of laddoos, crepes, and steamed
confections. Even the gods love sweets, which are the commonest food

EATING INDIA

items offered during the rituals of daily worship. Traditional Bengalis of
my grandmother’s generation firmly believed that it was unhealthy to
drink water on an empty stomach. The remedy was to pop a sweet into
your mouth before lifting the glass of water. If no proper sweets were
available, there was always the ubiquitous batasha, a spun sugar bonbon
of meringuelike texture.

The culinary difference between Bengal and other regions in India
IS seen in the ingredients used for making sweets. Non-Bengalis use
whole milk and evaporated milk of varying consistencies, as well as
legumes, flour, semolina, rice, and coconut, but never chhana. What I
had overlooked, in spite of having grown up in India, was the long¬
standing belief among Hindus outside Bengal that deliberately “cut¬
ting” or spoiling the milk of the sacred cow by the addition of acid is a
sin. The salty panir that we commonly see in northern Indian cooking
came in with the Muslim conquerors from western and central Asia (the
word is derived from the Farsi peynir), and it remained confined to Mus¬
lim homes for many centuries. It was certainly never offered to Hindu
gods. Enjoying cheese, as in the West, is also not part of eating in India.

What then happened to break the taboo in Bengal? There is no doc¬
umented evidence prior to the eighteenth century of chhana being used
for sweets. In households with access to a large supply of milk, evapora¬
tion was the method of choice to preserve excess amounts in prerefrig¬
eration times. Kheer (evaporated milk) sweetened with white or brown
sugar, is well loved by itself. If milk did get “spoiled” naturally, because
of hot weather or some other precipitating factor, the Bengalis probably
fed the liquid and solid portions to their farm animals and domestic fowl
such as ducks and geese. But once the Portuguese had settled around the
Bay of Bengal and the Bengalis discovered that they were very fond
of fresh cottage cheese —qiieijos frescos —some enterprising person must
have welcomed the economic opportunity of making cheese and sup¬
plying it to these foreigners.

It was probably two other factors that served to persuade the Ben¬
galis themselves to make use of chhana as food. The Portuguese hap¬
pened to be extremely skillful confectioners, as testified by European

IN PURSUIT OF THE PORTUGUESE

travelers. Francois Bernier, a French doctor who spent seven years in
India, from 1659 to 1666, noted that “Bengal likewise is celebrated for
its sweetmeats, especially in places inhabited by the Portuguese, who are
skilful in the art of preparing them and with whom they are an article
of considerable trade.” Second, as single men not interested in going
back home to find wives, the Portuguese settlers actively pursued mar¬
riages with local women. Very likely, the early marriages were with
Muslim women and Hindu women of the lower castes. Given the fa¬
miliarity thus generated between the Europeans and the Bengalis, and,
given their common predilection for sweets, it doesn’t take too much
imagination to see how some creative Bengali confectioners might have
started experimenting with chhana and transforming it into sweets of
a new kind—especially if they were Muslims. Many Bengali Muslims
happened to be hereditary cooks and confectioners—some descended
from royal chefs in the courts of Muslim rulers—and they were not
hampered by any sense of a religious taboo. But the Hindus must have
followed soon after.

Eating my morning sandesh, I was reminded of a journey I had made to
Goa the previous year. I was so intrigued by this reconstructed history
of Bengali sweets and the Portuguese origins of chhana that I simply
had to discover if there was anything resembling chhana sweets in the
cuisine of Goa, which is much better known for its Portuguese culinary
influence.

I flew to Bombay, where I stayed for several days with Sandip and
Mou Maiti, two friends who had migrated from Calcutta. Sandip is a
software entrepreneur and Mou a schoolteacher. The timing of the visit
was serendipitous, allowing us to jointly celebrate Saraswati Puja—a
spring festival in honor of the Hindu goddess of learning and music,
who is worshipped with great fanfare each year in Bengal. When I told
Sandip and Mou about wanting to make a trip to Goa to follow the trail
of Bengali sweets, they were filled with excitement. Sandip had friends
and colleagues in Goa he had been thinking of seeing for some time.
Impulsively, he decided to come with me. We could both stay with his

EATING INDIA

friend Gourav Jaswal, he told me, and promptly called Gourav to let him
know of our impending arrival Even at the last minute, getting train
tickets was no problem. We credited the goddess Saraswati for this bit of
good fortune. Perhaps she, too, was curious about the possible heathen
origin of chhana sweets that had been bought from a Bengali store in
Bombay and offered to her in the Maiti home.

We were taking the Jan Shatabdi Express operated by India’s
Konkan Railway, named after the Konkan region on India’s western
coast. The train left Bombay from Dadar station at the ungodly hour of
five thirty in the morning and was scheduled to reach Goa around one
thirty. For the first part of the journey, while the train snaked southward
down the Konkan coastline, I dozed, unresponsive to offers of tea and
food provided by the railway company. Beside me, I could hear Sandip
rustling through the newspapers and magazines he had brought, and
smell the strong spices of the meal that was served to him. When at last
I woke, the concrete landscape of Bombay and its burbs had vanished
and the verdant hills of the Western Ghats mountain range were flashing
past my window. For the next few hours, the vista of trees, hills, and
rivers glowing under a blue sky alternated with the impenetrable dark¬
ness of long tunnels running through the mountains. Despite the closed
windows of our air-conditioned compartment and the lingering odors
of the railway lunch, I imagined I could smell the perfume of clove and
cardamom and see the climbing vines of the pepper tree—all the spices
that had drawn foreigners to India’s western coast, in ancient and me¬
dieval times. The magic of that past transported me from the rocking
and rattling of a train in motion to the rise and fall of a large Arab dhow
riding the waves with a cargo of spice that would end up being sold in
the markets of Genoa or the Rialto of Venice, and flavor the banquets of
imperial Rome.

Goa is a tiny territory and most destinations there are easily reached.
Disembarking at Thivim station, Sandip and I drove to the Dona Paula
suburb of Goa’s capital Panjim, where Gourav jaswal and his wife, Gul-
nar Joshi, lived in a spacious two-storied house perched on a small

IN PURSUIT OF THE PORTUGUESE

hillock. Although I was aware of the 450 years of Portuguese presence
in Goa, I was still astonished by the sheer number of churches I saw
along the way. At any point, it seemed, you could throw a stone and hit
a church. And this was not even the area of Old Goa, where the Jesuits
built the extraordinary Basilica of Bom Jesus, along with many other el¬
egant houses of worship.

At first sight, Goa does live up to many of the claims made by tourist
brochures. The beaches are beautiful, the people friendly. History is wo¬
ven into every part of the landscape. When I chmbed the wide red stone
ramparts of Fort Aguada, built in 1612 by the Portuguese as a reference
point for vessels coming in from Europe, I was rewarded with a breath¬
taking view. The intense blue waters of Aguada Bay, which is a conflu¬
ence of the Mandovi River and the Arabian Sea, glittered under the
late-setting western sun. The blue of the water, the creamy gold of the
sand, and the intense green of the bushes that grow close to the shoreline
and stretch backward were juxtaposed in a magical congruity. What kind
of sand gives birth to such lush foliage? I stood and imagined the medieval
past, the Portuguese ships docking, and the adventurers, conquerors, and
missionaries disembarking, each consumed by a particular vision of what
India meant—^wealth, dominion, conversion of heathens.

As for the Indians, they must have been struck by the first Europe¬
ans to suddenly arrive on their shores. In a warm tropical region, where
dark skins and bare bodies were the norm, these men with white skin
and exotic clothes must have looked like the inhabitants of another
planet. A later description of the locals’ reaction to the Portuguese who
first came to Sri Lanka could well have come out of Goa. The Sri
Lankan king was told that they were “a race of very white and beautiful
people, who wear boots and hats of iron and never stop in any place.
They eat a sort of white stone and drink blood.” The last two items
could well be the queijos frescos they loved, and the red wine that they
drank instead of water.

Panjim is probably the cleanest capital city in India, and it is astonish¬
ingly green. The air is clear and breathable and an amazing number of

EATING INDIA

people speak fluent English. In and around the markets, 1 saw women
dressed in brightly colored cotton saris, their movements imbued with a
swift gracefulness. I remembered having heard that the Konkan region is
famous for its beautiful women.

The unique Indo-Portuguese style of architecture—stuccoed walls,
tiled roofs, long verandahs encircling the building—that has been pre¬
served in some neighborhoods creates the delightful sense of a time
warp. In an area called Fontainhas, where the yellow stuccoed walls of
houses, shops, and restaurants glowed in the strong western sun, I found
an art gallery filled with the white and blue porcelain tiles so typical of
Portugal, yet completely incorporated into the local artistic corpus. Co¬
habitation inevitably meant osmosis. Why should I be surprised that our
Bengali sweets came with an Iberian touch?

In the context of India’s long history, the 450 years of Portuguese
presence in Goa doesn’t seem all that remarkable. But their ruthless
sense of mission—monopolizing the spice trade, colonizing the area,
and proselytizing the natives—had the effect of almost obscuring the
older Hindu and Muslim civilizations of this region. It is easy to per¬
ceive Goa as a Christian enclave in India, rather than a territory inhab¬
ited by people of different faiths. The Basilica of Bom Jesus, consecrated
in May 1605, remains the most outstanding symbol of this first attempt
at domination by a European power. An enormous paved courtyard sur¬
rounds the basilica. Even in midmorning, the sun was merciless and the
heat from the stone courtyard was palpable through my shoes. Inside, it
was blessedly cool and since it was not a Sunday, there were only a few
visitors. The basilica’s main altar is dominated by a huge statue of Saint
Ignatius in priestly vestments. On a small pedestal in front of the statue
is the tiny figure of the infant Jesus after whom the church is named.
The basilica also houses a magnificent mausoleum with a glittering
silver casket, inside which he the remains of Saint Francis Xavier. Al¬
though the saint’s body was not embalmed or treated after death, it has
escaped decay, and this miraculous “incorruptibility” continues to draw
thousands of visitors to the basilica. I sat on a church bench watching
worshippers come in and stand in contemplation of the altar and the

IN PURSUIT OF THE PORTUGUESE

casket of Saint Francis. Culture dies hard; before leaving, they expressed
devotion to the Christian God and Christian saints v^ith the age-old
Hindu gesture of namaskar—heads bowed, palms folded together and
raised to touch the forehead.

My evening’s experience was wildly different from the quietness of a
devotional enclosure. Along with our hosts Gourav and his wife, Gulnar,
and several of their friends, Sandip and I went to Calangute Beach, one of
the favored locations for foreign tourists. Ever since the hippies discov¬
ered it in the sixties, Goa has always been a haven for Westerners longing
to escape their dreary northern winters. But as I saw in Calangute, the
crowd has changed somewhat from the laid-back, pot-smoking, bag-
toting flower children of an earlier generation. Many of the young and
not so young foreigners crowding the area looked tougher, meaner, and
captivated by harder drugs. The unfamiliar languages ranged from Dutch,
German, and Norwegian to Hebrew—the last indicating the large num¬
bers of Israeli youth who come to Goa to relax after finishing their com¬
pulsory stint in the Israeli Army.

Quite a few foreigners in Goa have become impromptu settlers, as
we discovered talking to a man with a shaved head. He had arrived from
Germany six years earlier and never gone back. Dressed in an Indian
dhoti and kurta, he was busily rolling out dough in a food stall to make
parathas, which were then stuffed with meat and vegetables by several
assistants. The long lines waiting to buy these “rolls” implied that this
was a tasty concoction, but there was nothing of Goa about it. A stuffed
paratha is very much a northern Indian item, though it has colonized
almost every city in India.

It was in an incense shop that I came face-to-face with the sadder, if
not darker side of tourism in Goa. Lured by the exquisite scent coming
out of the shop’s tentlike enclosure, I went inside, hoping to buy some
incense to take back to America. On a ragged carpet sat a little girl of
eight or nine, her appearance clearly a mixture of India and the West. I
asked for the owner of the shop, and she replied in an unnaturally poised
tone that she could sell me whatever I wanted; her mother had left her
in charge. I asked if they lived in Goa, and she nodded. As I was making

EATING INDIA

my selection from the packets of incense sticks, the mother, a pretty
young European woman, came back. She, too, had come to Goa several
years earlier—a drifting, accidental tourist, unhappy at home, looking
for something better in a sunlit ancient land. Within a few months, she
had become involved with an Indian man. But he disappeared after she
told him about her pregnancy. With no money to buy an air ticket, and
with no strong family ties back home, she had simply drifted into a
mode of day-to-day survival in Goa. I looked again at her daughter be¬
fore I left the shop, and wondered what kind of thoughts jostled each
other behind those somber, almost adult-looking dark brown eyes.

The next day, our host suggested that Sandip and I have lunch with him.
He would also show us around town. Gourav runs a consulting com¬
pany called Synapse that helps clients resolve business problems through
innovative techniques. Sandip and I went over to meet him there. The
bright young people who work at Synapse were delightfully friendly
but, as we talked, I could see how perplexed they were by a person who
was willing to travel hundreds of miles merely to flesh out obscure in¬
formation about Bengali sweets. I lost no time in explaining that I was
equally interested in sampling the broad range of Goanese food.

We drove around town, stopping wherever I saw anything
interesting—the type of aimless exploration that makes for the best
kind of traveling. One gratifying experience came from a bakery whose
bread, I discovered, including the French-style baguettes, could easily
compete with those of classy bakeries in the West. It should not have
been a surprise. This, after all, is the land of pao, the Portuguese word
for Western baked bread, which is so different from more traditional In¬
dian breads, leavened or not.

Some Goans even prefer to eat their most famous dish, vindaloo
(derived from a Portuguese meat stew made with garlic and wine) with
pao instead of rice. On one of my other trips to India, I had visited a re¬
tired Bengali banker, Samit Ghosh, and his Goanese wife, Elaine Marie,
who live in a Bangalore suburb called Whitefield. The couple’s home is
an enormous estate named Pairi Daeza. Behind high walls was the most

IN PURSUIT OF THE PORTUGUESE

lavish private garden I had ever seen. For the passionate cook, it was a
paradise, in which you could simply stretch out your arm and pluck the
bay leaves you needed for a dish, or pick a couple of star fruit to slice up
for a tart salad. Both Samit and Elaine are food enthusiasts, and I had
the pleasure of watching Elaine cook mackerel vindaloo for our dinner.
Until then, I had assumed that vindaloo was always made with pork. It
took a Goanese woman to disabuse me of this notion. When we sat
down to dinner, which included, among other items, the famed Goanese
dish of sorpotel, Elaine surprised me by refusing to eat rice with her
vindaloo. For her, nothing equaled the satisfaction of mopping up the
tongue-blistering hot gravy with large pieces of soft white pao.

By one thirty, we were all consumed with hunger, and Gourav
stopped the car in front of his favorite restaurant. I had asked him ear¬
lier to find a place that served good fish. A love of fish, to the point of
eating it nearly every day, is something the people of Goa share with
Bengalis. The difference lies in the Goan preference for marine species
like salmon, mullet, mackerel, sardine, skate, and prawn. In a poem, one
of Goa’s best-known poets begs the god of death for one day’s reprieve,
just so he can enjoy the fish that has been cooked for him.

‘‘Well, here we are. You’ll have the best fish curry of your life,” de¬
clared Gourav. “It’s made with kingfish, which is also called surmai, and
the taste is absolutely divine.”

Again, that word—curry. A slippery eel of a word, bent and stretched
to cover almost anything with a spicy sauce, a king of misnomers, and yet,
to those who use it, the perfect definition for whatever they are trying to
describe at that given moment. I’ve had a beef with curry for many years,
long enough now to have quit protesting its application or urging the
user to find a more accurate word. If Goanese fish curry was delicious, I
was ready to sample it.

On the restaurant menu, in any case, there were more than enough
exotic Portuguese names to cheer me. There was assado, bafad, cal-
deirada, barrada, feijoada, temperado, sorpotel, cafreal, xacuti, and of
course vindaloo (derived from the Portuguese words, vinho [wine] and

EATING INDIA

allies [garlicj)—a whole vocabulary of eating that is linguistically Iber¬
ian, yet firmly rooted in the use of indigenous ingredients like tamarind,
kokum (a sour fruit), and tefla (a berry), as well as common Indian
spices. Even bacalhau (Portuguese salt cod), which has now become a
luxury because of lack of availability, is cooked in a style that is an in¬
triguing blend of East and West, with chickpeas, potatoes, macaroni,
onion, garlic, olive oil, cloves, and cinnamon. As for curry, when it ap¬
pears as cariU a historic glamour temporarily washes over the inadequacy
of the English term.

Gourav was right. The kingfish was superb. So was the pomfret that
Sandip ordered. I was less impressed, however, by the chicken xacuti.
Despite its Portuguese name, it is not a dish limited only to Christians;
Hindu Goans also cook and serve it frequently The sauce is composed
of a long list of spices, including dill and poppy seeds, roasted and
ground together. Coconut milk, green chilies, and cilantro are added to
give the finished product a greenish tinge. Perhaps it was the plethora of
spices that drowned out each other; perhaps the chef in this particular
restaurant simply had a better hand with fish than chicken.

I heard someone at the next table ordering sorpotel and tried to see
what it looked like when the waiter brought it in. Sorpotel (also spelled
sarapatel), as I had learned earlier from Elaine Marie, should be eaten sev¬
eral days after it has been made, to allow the flavors to blend. The main
ingredients are pork meat, liver, and heart, as well as fresh pig’s blood
blended with a bit of vinegar. This, like several other Goanese dishes, has
a fiery taste; some recipes include as many as sixty dried chilies for three
pounds of meat and offal. Other spices used in sorpotel are those com¬
mon to many meat dishes—cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon, turmeric,
cumin, onion, garlic, ginger, and green chilies. Tamarind, another main¬
stay of coastal Indian cooking, provides the requisite tartness. All of these
make sorpotel an easy dish to preserve, almost like a pickle, even in a hot
climate. But the use of pork makes it anathema for Muslims, while the
inclusion of pig’s blood may put off the Hindus.

Goa’s best-known dish, vindaloo, is usually made with pork as well.

IN PURSUIT OF THE PORTUGUESE

It keeps so well that in prerefrigeration days, one could even use it
as travel food. The meat is marinated for five or six hours, or even
overnight, in a mixture of spices (garlic figuring plentifully) and vine¬
gar. Onions are then fried in oil, and the meat and spices added for slow
cooking. One reason for the development of pork as a major element in
the diet of Christian Goans is that there is very little pastureland in the
area for cows or goats to graze. Pigs, on the other hand, like chickens
and ducks, are resourceful animals that can feed themselves through for¬
aging and rooting in any kind of land and also by consuming kitchen
scraps. Once Christianity had been introduced, the Islamic ban on eat¬
ing pork and the Hindu reservations about a dirty, foraging animal be¬
came irrelevant.

As Gourav, Sandip, and I made our way through lunch, I kept ob¬
serving as many tables as I could. Nowhere on the customers’ plates nor
on the menu was there any sign of one of the basic building blocks of a
Bengali/Indian meal. Dal doesn’t seem to figure as a separate course in
Goa. The Portuguese influence cannot explain this omission; after all,
Goa did have a rich history and cuisine of many centuries before their
arrival. Instead, the indigenous diet has been shaped by Goa’s coastal ge¬
ography. The common elements of that cuisine were rice, fish, and co¬
conut, along with local spices. To a certain extent, that still remains the
foundation of Goanese cooking. The different kinds of dal that are so
integral to meals in other parts of India, from Bengal to Gujarat, from
Punjab to Tamil Nadu, could be overlooked by the coastal palate of Goa
because of the easy availability of seafood and meat. The Hindus have
also made much of locally grown vegetables—the astonishingly tender
okra, combined with onion, ginger, garlic, tomato, and a teaspoonful of
vinegar; young jackfruit (as tasty as the tender meat of kid goat); egg¬
plant; bitter melon seasoned with many spices and, to the Bengali, the
heretical addition of tamarind pulp; and cabbage cooked with grated
coconut and seasoned with onion, ginger, and garlic.

As a Bengali and a prawn lover, I was eager to sample as many
Goanese prawn dishes as I could. But time was not on my side. In one
restaurant, we ate skewered prawns for dinner, and for the first time I

EATING INDIA

was willing to concede that a marine prawn can be as delicious as the
offerings of Bengal’s lakes and rivers. In Goa’s fertile coastal domain,
there is an astonishing array of marine fish, ranging from tiny specimens
to larger ones like salmon, mullet, mackerel, sardines, and others. Ac¬
cording to some sources, 117 varieties of fish have been identified in the
markets of Goa. The fish curry that I ate with Gourav and Sandip has
probably been made in Goanese kitchens for a thousand years, except
that neither chilies nor vinegar were available before the arrival of the
Portuguese. Other recipes for curried fish and prawn have also evolved
out of local ingredients and stood the test of time. But Goanese cooks
have borrowed European techniques and created dishes like fish cakes,
prawn pies, breaded fish fillets, whole baked fish with stuffing, and
smoked and salted fish.

The one item that dominates and unites all the contrary elements in
a Goanese kitchen, Christian, Hindu, or Muslim, has to be the coconut.
So pervasive is its influence that even in recipes that call for cow’s milk,
the Goanese cook will use coconut milk. The primacy of the coconut
tree, especially in contrast to the banana tree that Hindus in Bengal so
revere, is enshrined in a legend popular among Goanese Christians, and
it is a charming instance of rewriting a Middle Eastern story with an
Indian alphabet. It describes how Joseph and Mary fled with the baby
Jesus through a countryside that is clearly in India. At one point, tired
and worn out, they stopped near a banana tree and asked for shelter, but
the tree refused to help. Then the family neared a coconut tree and
made the same request. The tree dropped its large fronds to cover them,
allowing them to rest undisturbed and recover from exhaustion. In ac¬
knowledgment of this act of generosity, Mary blessed the tree, saying it
would be fruitful throughout the year and that every part of it would
benefit humankind. The people of Goa, along with many other Indians,
have joyfully utilized the leaves for thatching homes, the spines to make
brooms, the trunk as timber, and of course the fruit as a protean source
of nourishment. By contrast, the fate of the accursed banana tree has
been to die after bearing fruit only once.

Not only is the coconut used in a hundred different ways to cook

IN PURSUIT OF THE PORTUGUESE

fish and meat in Goa, it also plays an important role in desserts. A very
simple rural sweet, pathoyeo, made to celebrate the beginning of the
harvest season, consists of rice, palm sugar, and ground coconut spread
on a turmeric leaf, which is then folded, sealed, and steamed gently.
Other indigenous sweets made with coconut, palm sugar, legumes like
moong beans and chickpeas, rice, and semolina, have taken on names
from the language of the Portuguese rulers—cocada, doce de grao,
mongonne, doce-baji.

The merger of East and West has produced a whole corpus of cakes,
custards, puddings, and creams for the Goan to enjoy, especially during
Christmas and wedding festivities. Undoubtedly, the king of all Goanese
desserts is bebinca, a legendary, multilayered cake, an absolute must at
formal banquets and meals. It is the perfect example of two widely dis¬
parate culinary imaginations at their creative best. Baking breads and
cakes is definitely a technique imported from the West and associated
with Christian eating traditions. Combining flour and eggs to make
something sweet is another. Among Hindu Indians, sweets were consid¬
ered appropriate offerings for the gods, and could therefore never in¬
clude eggs, which are considered nonvegetarian. Eggs, in fact, are an
oddity, since the Hindus, even while they ate fish and meat, imposed a
taboo on eggs for a long time. Foreign travelers noted this, among them
the itinerant Portuguese priest. Father Sebastian Manrique, who traveled
through India, from Bengal to Punjab, in the seventeenth century. Rice
pudding in India, for instance, never includes eggs as it does in the West¬
ern kitchen, since it is one of the commonest foods offered to the gods.
The creamy consistency is achieved by evaporating the milk before the
rice is cooked in it.

Bebinca calls for coconut milk, sugar, flour, egg yolks, ghee, grated
nutmeg, and slivered almonds for garnishing. The final product consists
of eight or ten separate layers, each baked separately in a pan coated
with ghee. The process takes hours and, even so, is fraught with disaster
for the unwary. The taste, however, is ambrosial, as I discovered the few
times I have been fortunate enough to taste it, in Goa and elsewhere.
Goans who have settled in other parts of India, often buy bebinca from

EATING INDIA

shops when they visit their home territory and bring it back for nostal¬
gic mouthfuls. It can be frozen and kept for quite some time. The use of
ghee instead of butter, of coconut milk instead of regular milk, turns a
Western cake into a richly modified Eastern entity.

Delighted though I was to find and sample bebinca and other Goanese
sweets, there was no trace of any dessert made with the chhana that sup¬
posedly the Portuguese had taught Bengalis to make. I spent hours por¬
ing over documents in the Xavier Centre of Historical Research and in
the State Central Library, where the senior librarian, Maria de Lourdes,
is herself the author of a Goanese cookbook. Nowhere did I find any
indication that anything resembling the sandesh or rosogolla or the host
of other Bengali chhana sweets had ever been part of the Goan reper¬
toire. Yet the possibility, if not a confirmation, of the Bengalis learning
the sweet secrets of chhana from the Portuguese settlers in their land
unexpectedly affirmed itself in an article I found that had been written
around 1921 in a journal called the Indo-Portuguese Review. In writing
about the descendants of the Portuguese in Bengal, the author, D. M.
Terreiro, commented that the Indians were tied to the Portuguese with
“tender ties of love.” What better than love to break down taboos and
inhibitions and arouse the urge to experiment, taste, and enlarge the
boundaries of the senses?

On the train back to Bombay, 1 was suddenly reminded of one of
my favorite paintings of Krishna as a young god—the work of a great
Bengali artist, Jamini Roy. It shows a chubby blue-skinned infant (blue
was the metaphorical representation for a dark skin) wearing a yellow
dhoti, holding out two palms expectantly, while his mother rotates the
butter churner in an earthen pot of cream. Although the son of a king,
Krishna was sent off to be brought up by a dairy farmer and his wife, to
keep him safe from the murderous intentions of a Herod-like uncle.
Few other gods have aroused as much popular affection and tenderness
as Krishna the dispossessed royal child, loving and being loved by the
people of a rural community. The numerous stories (mostly from the
medieval period) about his childhood depict a mischievous imp who

IN PURSUIT OF THE PORTUGUESE

often got into trouble and loved to steal cream and butter from his
mother’s larder.

Visualizing the beautiful details of the Roy painting, it struck me
that, in that world, there had been no chhana to steal, no sandesh or
rosogolla to relish. Whatever one may think of the Portuguese arrival in
India and their dominion in Goa, modern Bengalis can be thankful to
them for having expanded their culinary world beyond what was once
available to the gods.

Chapter Three

Road Food on the Highway

Revisiting Goa in my mind, a year after that memorable trip, was the per¬
fect prelude for the long food exploration I was planning. I knew it would
never be possible for me to know any other city as intimately as Calcutta,
the place of my birth, just as I would not appreciate any other regional
cuisine in India as intimately, instinctively, and with as much sense of his¬
tory, as I did that of Bengal. But Goa had been an experience that made
me eager to see the India I did not know. I felt a bit like those medieval
knights who were always setting off on quests, seeking outlandish beasts,
damsels in distress, magical tasks, the Holy Grail. What I hoped to find, in
the destinations I had selected across India, were cuisines and stories, rich
with native imagination and currents of external influence.

ROAD FOOD ON THE HIGHWAY

During the few days I still had in Calcutta before starting out, I
found myself compulsively wandering the streets, instead of visiting
friends, or shopping, or going to see Bengali films. Under a smoggy sky,
my city had become a melange of old colonial buildings, crumbling
bare-brick walls, a few quaint neighborhoods untouched by time, and
brash new glass and concrete office towers, multiplex shopping malls,
and intrusive overpasses arched over existing roads. In the outlying areas
mushroomed new housing estates with modern amenities like gyms,
swimming pools, playrooms, grocery stores, and clubs. Life here and in
most of India was being churned with an unprecedented fervor.

Despite the frenetic clip of modernization in some areas, India’s roads
remain a stubbornly old-fashioned part of her geography. The British,
who ruled for two hundred years, focused their energies on creating an
extensive rail network for the transportation of people and commodities.
But these were not sufficient to meet the needs of an enormous land and
its ever-growing population. Today, growing numbers of trucks, buses,
and cars, as well as the age-old bullock carts, traverse India on potholed,
rudimentary highways, making them a cacophonic, chaotic, perilous way
to travel. Meanwhile, the ease of air travel and virtual travel steadily erode
the magic of the road. But for my food odyssey to be well rounded,
I needed a taste of highway travel. The best place for such an experience
was the ancient, historic road that began right ouside my city and ran all
the way across the heart of India.

Ever since I had arrived to attend the wedding, I had been hearing
and reading about an ambitious new highway project undertaken by the
Indian government. It was called—rather grandiosely, I thought—the
Golden Quadrilateral. I downloaded a map from the Internet and studied
it. The plan consisted of a system of superhighways and lesser roads con¬
necting the four major metropolitan centers—Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay,
and Madras (the last three now called Kolkata, Mumbai, and Chennai)—
to each other and to other major cities throughout the country. It was a
much-needed makeover for the twenty-first century, with a budget of
several billion dollars, and a timeframe of fifteen years for completion.
However, given the way things work in India, I knew that progress would

EATING INDIA

be snarled and uneven. While spifFy-smootli inultilane highways might
quickly grow out of a city like Bombay, lesser-known areas could easily
languish for decades with incomplete roads. For me, though, it was the
continuing expansion of an existence along these roads that mattered.
Could roads be built without people? Could laborers work without food?
Could travelers journey without eating?

1 remembered the very first journey of my life—a vacation trip by
train from Calcutta to Puri in the neighboring state of Orissa, famed for
its Hindu temples and exquisite beaches. My cousin Rani and I were
going with my mother and her parents. The adults were excited about
visiting the great Jagannath Temple in Puri, where they would make of¬
ferings and prayers, and eat the sacred “bhog” cooked in the temple for
devotees. Bhog is strictly vegetarian, consisting of rice and dal and a
concoction of many vegetables cooked together in a pot. It is amazingly
tasty.

On the train, however. Rani and I, both eight years old, had no
thought for the religious observance or ritual foods to come. Instead, as
I still remember after all these years, we watched with lip-smacking
anticipation while our mothers took out the tiffin carrier (a series of
nesting aluminum containers held together by metal rods on the sides,
possibly the best innovation to come out of the British colonial era)
containing our home-cooked dinner. As the lids came off, irresistible
odors filled the train compartment. We leaned forward eagerly to see
and smell before touching and consuming the traveling Bengali’s tra¬
ditional nourishment—soft, airy luchis; slow-cooked potatoes flavored
with cinnamon, cardamom and asafetida; kasha mangsho (tender goat
meat coated in a rich and fragrant sauce); and an assortment of sweets.
What bliss to plunge your fingers into this food and munch your
mouthfuls to the synchronized rhythm of a swaying, noisy train running
through a night-dark country.

In the morning we were woken by loud cries of “Chai garam,” as
the train pulled into a station. Young men and boys were loudly an¬
nouncing hot tea for sale. As soon as the train stopped, the passengers
opened the compartment doors and the vendors jumped in carrying

ROAD FOOD ON THE HIGHWAY

large aluminum kettles full of milky, sweet tea in one hand and a basket
full of conical earthen mugs in the other. They poured the tea into the
mugs, called khuris, and offered packaged cookies to those who wanted
them. The khuris were the perfect disposable cups; after finishing your
tea, you simply threw them out of the window, where they smashed to
bits, to be swept away by the station cleaners later, or, simply degrade
into the landscape if you threw them out of a running train. Behind
the tea sellers came other vendors, carrying other breakfast fare ranging
from oranges and bananas to boiled eggs still in their shells, puffed rice,
and roasted chickpeas. Rani and I were considered too young to be per¬
mitted to drink tea, but on the occasion of this first long journey, our
parents relaxed the rules enough to let us sip from their khuris. Oranges
and cookies made the perfect breakfast, downed with water from the
thermos we had brought with us.

The pleasurable excitement of that kind of family vacation was no
longer on the horizon. But I was filled with a different kind of excite¬
ment. Not only was the starting point of the Golden Quadrilateral proj¬
ect right outside Calcutta, it was the continuation of a historic road that
went back several centuries. India old and new, fused into a renewable
highway, was waiting for me.

As I contemplated the prospect of being on the road, I was reminded
of the near-mythic connotations that the road and its travelers have in
America, my adopted home. They have been celebrated by countless
writers (not only Kerouac but many others as well), poets, and singers;
the minstrelsy of the road has become a large part of the American con¬
sciousness. And road food-—from a kaleidoscopic panoply of eateries of¬
fering signature regional cooking—is an institution that sustains the
mobile culture of this country. In India, the colonial past and the post¬
independence years have created a similar magic around train travel.
While dining-car fare, when it does exist (on the newer, more sophisti¬
cated long-distance trains) is depressingly banal, it is countered by the
joyful tradition of carrying your own food and sharing it with your fam¬
ily and friends, as I had learned from my first train journey. My more re¬
cent trip to Goa had been both reaffirmation and letdown from the point

EATING INDIA

of view of food. The tea sold on the platform came in horrible little plas¬
tic cups, designed like the khuris to be discarded, but these were more
likely to poison the land. The food served by the railway company (in¬
cluded in the price of tickets and therefore hard to ignore) was grimly
overspiced. And the only snacks sold by itinerant vendors were the chikis,
brittle candy made with peanuts or sesame seeds. It made me even more
curious to find what was available for travelers and workers on the high¬
way It also evoked for me images of India’s ancient and medieval past,
when the road was the only way to travel.

From ancient times, India, like China, has fascinated travelers of every
persuasion. But of all the great countries with an ancient civilization,
probably none has been more open to the outsider. A succession of em¬
perors and conquerors established their strongholds over huge swaths of
the subcontinent’s territory, but none felt the need or the desire to build
a Great Wall. In this land, with an innate diversity of inhabitants and
bountiful natural resources, the magic of roads, rivers, and bordering
seas never failed to take hold of the imagination of natives and foreign¬
ers. Successive waves of people came to India, lured by the promise of
fortune, power, opportunity, adventure, and enlightenment. Those who
stayed added their imprint to a perennially evolving civilization. The
land became a crucible for the shaping of an unpremeditated immigrant
nation.

In the sixteenth century, a dynamic and visionary Afghan ruler, Sher
Shah Suri, built a highway called Sarak-i-Azam that spanned the width
of the subcontinent, from Bengal in the east to Punjab in the west. In a
way, it was as ambitious a concept as the Great Wall of China, though
its purpose was not defense. Sher Shah’s goal was to foster good gover¬
nance and efficient administration, as well as to promote trade and com¬
merce throughout the empire. But it is safe to say that he could not have
imagined how durable this highway would be in linking disparate parts
of an enormous country, how its aura would continue to captivate trav¬
elers and pilgrims down the centuries. In colonial times, the British ex¬
tended the road all the way to Peshawar and Kabul and renamed it the

ROAD FOOD ON THE HIGHWAY

Grand Trunk Road. Kipling, that quintessential voice of the Raj, made
it the playing field of his unforgettable hero, Kim. He called it “such a
river of life as exists nowhere else in the world.” In the traumatic after-
math of the 1947 Partition of India, when droves of refugees fled across
the newly drawn borders, the road became an involuntary escape route,
as well as the site of massacres.

In the new millennium, the Grand Trunk Road still retains its lus¬
ter and romance. Every time I reread Kim and let myself be caught up
in a past that seemed almost more vivid than the present, I relished the
knowledge that the starting point of this legendary route—India’s
equivalent of the Silk Road—happened to be my hometown, Calcutta.
Compared to the nation’s capital, Delhi, Calcutta is a young city.
But this historic route, running from medieval to modern times and
now becoming part of the Golden Quadrilateral as National Highway
Number 1, has always lent it a special burnish in my mind. Contemplat¬
ing the Grand Trunk Road is a way to be connected to both past and
future.

When Sher Shah built his highway, he also arranged for inns and
hostelries to be constructed every few miles for the convenience of
travelers. I often imagined the medieval movable feast that unfolded on
travelers’ platters as they moved east to west. At the starting point in
Bengal, it had to be rice, vegetables, and fish. In the northern reaches,
they would find wheat-flour chapattis (bread baked on a griddle), dal,
panir (salted cottage cheese), and maybe some kebabs. In Punjab, the hot
naan bread cooked in a tandoor would be served with mustard greens
and rich halvahs. But the fellowship of the road did not meld rich and
poor. Compared to the merchants, traders, noblemen, and courtiers
traveling with all the comforts of wealth, the peasants, laborers, and itin¬
erant holy men—Hindu sadhus, Buddhist monks, or Sufi mystics—could
only have commanded minimal resources. Road food, for them, was
probably little more than rice and dal cooked m a pot over an open fire.
If they were lucky enough to get hold of vegetables and seasonings
other than salt, those too would go into the pot. This roadside pottage
is the likely ancestor of one of India’s commonest staples—khichuri in

EATING INDIA

Bengal, khichdi in Hindi-speaking areas, kedgeree in colonialspeak. It
has as many incarnations as Hindu gods. When Buddhist monks trav¬
eled across India in medieval times, the khichuri cooked in the evening
on a roadside fire was their sole meal. And when a Bengali wanted to
celebrate the arrival of the life-giving monsoon rains, he also made
khichuri, but with ghee and spices that the monks could not afford.
One version of this rice-and-dal dish, topped with spicy sauces, is
called kushuri and is found on the streets of Cairo, as an Egyptian fel¬
low student once told me. It was probably introduced there along with
the British armed forces, many of whom were Indian recruits.

Fascinated as I was by the history and legend of Sher Shah’s opus, I
knew it wasn’t possible for me to travel the whole length of the Grand
Trunk Road. I had already read a lot about different stretches of the
road, especially the part that ran through the state of Punjab and
ended at the Pakistani border. Punjabi truck drivers, aggressively rushing
down the road, refusing to yield to other cars and trucks, have become
the stuff of legend in modern India. They are the ones who have popu¬
larized the Punjabi eateries called dhabas that serve quick, hot, nourish¬
ing meals of naan bread cooked in the tandoor, thick bowls of dal,
tomato-and-onion-laced vegetables, and sometimes meat or chicken.
They are the ones who transport vital supplies across the country.
And late at night, they are the ones who stop to pick up roadside
sex workers, for short-term pleasures and the possibility of long-term
devastation.

Far from Punjab, I simply wanted to travel along the eastern end (or
beginning) of the road for as long as needed to form some idea of what
sustained the laborers and travelers. Putting aside the vision of medieval
foot traffic, horse-drawn carriages, and palanquins carried by bearers, I
set out in a mundane motorcar. Passing the airport, I noticed an im¬
promptu shrine. A painted clay statue of Hanuman, the monkey god,
had been placed under a large peepul tree. A steady stream of men and
women stopped to make offerings of flowers and sweets that were being
sold nearby. Devoutly, they folded their hands, prayed for a few minutes,
and went their way. The sight reminded me of a report I had read about

ROAD FOOD ON THE HIGHWAY

construction coming to a halt on another part of the Golden Quadrilat¬
eral project because an old temple sat in the middle of the area through
which the existing highway would be widened to four lanes. Residents
of the villages on both sides of the temple were protesting the move,
claiming that destroying the temple would bring disaster on them. Old
India was as vigorous and had as much of a decibel level as the slick,
Americanized new India that the government is forever trying to proj¬
ect to the world.

From the car I watched the stream of trucks, vans, and cars,
their drivers honking impatiently, hogging the right of way, cursing
wildly when the odd bullock cart or two obstructed them. It was
nothing more than what I expected. But what struck me was the com¬
plexity of the construction that became visible soon after I got out of
the city.

The Golden Quadrilateral project was really underway with an ex¬
tensive network of ramps, overpasses, and arteries, in various stages of
completion, branching out of the original highway. Until now, I had not
been sure how much of what I read was government propaganda. I
looked at the groups of men and women toiling away, some doing work
manually that is mostly mechanized in developed countries. Through
the open car window, I heard shouted instructions in Bengali, Hindi, and
dialects I could not understand. Many of these laborers were transient
migrants from Bengal’s neighboring states. Some of them would give up
and move on to other projects when the strain on their bodies became
too much to bear. But the loudmouthed supervisors and well-dressed
contractors would remain a fixture on the landscape until the project
was completed.

Driving along, I observed the women carrying stones and bricks in
shallow, woklike containers on their heads. Others were visible, breaking
large bricks and stones into pieces with hammers. It was hard to imag¬
ine how they found the strength to do the work. Scantily clad men, their
bare legs white with road dust, stood mixing concrete. Others manned
the vehicles that poured tar over finished sections of the road.

How did this motley crew of itinerant laborers and overseers sustain

EATING INDIA

themselves, especially on the long stretches that were far from towns and
villages, where the usual sweetshops or tea shops were not to be found?
Did they eat chapattis and vegetables, or rice and dal, or dry food like
puffed rice and roasted chickpeas, or snacks like samosas (savory turn¬
overs) and pakoras? I pressed on, looking for roadside stalls or makeshift
restaurants.

Out of nowhere rose the vision of a long-forgotten roadside meal
eaten by a migrant community that had been an intrinsic part of my
early life—the rickshaw pullers of Calcutta. Most of them had come
from Bengal’s neighboring state of Bihar. Walking home from the bus
stop in the afternoon, I sometimes saw them sitting on a shady pave¬
ment, eating their simple lunch. The food was always the same—roasted
chickpea flour, called chhatu in Bengali, sattu in Hindi. They kneaded
it vigorously with water and seasoned it with salt and some pungent
mustard oil, before rolling it into small round balls in the palm of their
hands. Onto battered metal plates with raised edges, they put some hot
green chilies and maybe an onion or two. Each mouthful of balled-up
dough was enlivened with frequent bites of chilies and onions, and
washed down with large gulps of water. At times, I slowed my pace to a
shuffle, simply to watch the completion of the meal. A loud belch fol¬
lowed the final drink of water. Then the plates and glasses were v/ashed
at a roadside tap and put away in the boxlike spaces under the rickshaw
seats. Afterward, the men spread out their red and white checked gam-
chhas (thin woven towels they always wore round their necks as sweat
rags) on the pavement, and lay down for a nap. Instant oblivion trans¬
formed their gaunt features into a peculiar smoothness. Afterward, it was
difficult to be my usual picky self when my mother or grandmother set
out the next meal for me.

On Sher Shah’s road, it took me an hour to find what I was looking
for—the typical makeshift unit of a tarpaulin roof on bamboo poles, a
table and a bench, a couple of portable kerosene stoves, lidded aluminum
pots, and large kettles. This was an eating stop for the road crew (though
not those who did the hardest, most back-breaking labor and seemed the
poorest) and some of the truck drivers. The customers, sweat-streaked

ROAD FOOD ON THE HIGHWAY

and grubby-clothed, eagerly leaned forward to see what was being ladled
out of the pots. As the chipped ceramic plates were set down on the table,
I saw the fast-food option for that day—a mound of noodles, gleaming
with oil and streaked with a reddish brown sauce. Bits of chopped veg¬
etables and even rarer shreds of omelets dotted the pile of starch. Ersatz
Chinese food has become the khichuri of the new millennium. I asked
the driver of my car to slow down and pretend to fix something so that
I could have a few minutes to take in the scene before me. The men ate
with quick, ravenous, shoveling motions, drawing in the dangling strands
with slurping noises. After a few moments, I noticed that they did not
eat with their hands as is usual in India. Nor did they use chopsticks or
forks. The utensil of choice was the teaspoon, a peculiarly postcolonial
Indian adaptation to a foreign food.

Unable to suppress the thought that the medieval khichuri would
have been a far healthier option, I looked ahead at the road and its ramps
and offshoots that sprawled in dizzying loops, just like the platefuls of
fried noodles. After hundreds of miles, India’s Grand Trunk Road
would end near the Pakistani border, outside the Indian city of Amritsar.
I expected it would be smoother and straighter there, running through
the gold-flowered mustard fields of Punjab. But I would have to look for
it at some future date. For now, I had to turn back to Calcutta and look
southward. A hotter sun, rockier lands, and thicker coconut groves in a
southern state beckoned to me. I was booked on a plane to Bangalore,
capital of Karnataka, better known to the world as India’s “cool” soft¬
ware capital. I was reasonably sure that road food there would be some¬
thing other than a plate full of greasy Chinese noodles.

Chapter Four

A Southern Thali in Karnataka

The Indian South carries an aura of distinctive identity, culture, and
mythology, comparable in its specificity to that of the American South.
If you draw a line west to east, halfway down the Indian landmass, you’ll
be left with a triangular wedge to the south, like a slice of pie. Think
pumpkin, rather than apple, for that is a vegetable which grows in this
area. The territorial pie includes the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil
Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala, and, through the centuries, its borders have
merged, extended, and contracted under different ruling powers. Fabled
labels identify the cuisines that have developed here under a blazing sun,
washed by the waters of two oceans, nursed by rushing rivers, and con¬
toured by hills and rocky plateaus—Coondapuri, Malabar, Chettinad.

A SOUTHERN THALI IN KARNATAKA

The harshness and lushness of nature have created the original culinary
molds, which then evolved through centuries of impact by other races
and religions, imported ingredients, and cultural and colonial fusions. But
they are bonded with an imperceptible yet definite thread of “southern¬
ness’' that is further reinforced by an ethos that seems more ancient than
what you encounter in other parts of the subcontinent.

For me, the southern state of Karnataka had always seemed one of
the most fascinating locations for a culinary treasure hunt. An enormous
area, it has a wide variety of topographies and climates, which have
given birth to several distinctive styles of cooking and eating. A thou¬
sand years of food history is well documented in a series of texts,
ancient and medieval. Bangalore, therefore, was one of the earliest desti¬
nations on my projected itinerary, one that I anticipated with avidity.
And it did not disappoint. The city proved to be a surprising gateway to
a varied, nuanced, yet bold cuisine that was unlike any I had encoun¬
tered before.

Food, like race and ethnicity, can be all too easily stereotyped. The
dismissive cliches about southern cuisines that I had grown up with—
always vegetarian, swimming in coconut oil, having little to offer beyond
bland idlis, dosas, uthhappams, and curd-rice—have thankfully crumbled
away. Dosas (large crepes made with a fermented dough of rice flour and
ground dal) have in fact conquered India and become a favorite item
among urban fast foods, especially for working people. But in a popular
eatery or “tiffin room” in Bangalore, this utterly familiar item startled my
taste buds with a lacing of chili-garlic-peanut paste in between its delicate
folds. The proprietor and cooks, I learned later, were all Coondapuri
Brahmins, a community whose cooking is marked by a liberal use of ghee
and spices. Another restaurant served me a dal spiced with a mouthwater¬
ing Coondapuri blend of roasted desiccated coconut, whole red chilies,
coriander, and fenugreek seeds, all crushed into an aromatic mix. As in
the cuisines of neighboring Kerala and Goa, coconut is used in every
conceivable form; it is a sign of prosperity and is an integral part of the
cuisine. Meat, fish, and rice acquire sharp tones from the use of tamarind,
fresh kari leaves, asafetida, peppercorns, jaggery (unrefined palm sugar).

EATING INDIA

and cumin. One day, as I wandered around by myself, I was arrested by
the sight of a roadside stall that displayed slices of fresh-cut star fruit
sprinkled with an enigmatic spice mixture calculated to enhance the
fruit’s delicate acidity. Throwing caution to the winds, I sampled some. It
was quite unlike anything I had tasted elsewhere. Over the next few days,
I became conscious of such a powerful seduction that I wished I could
indefinitely stay on, uncovering more of Karnataka’s secrets.

As in any unfamiliar territory, I longed to find an interlocutor who
would guide me with knowledge and enthusiasm. Some Bengali friends
introduced me to Ajith Saldana, an author and food critic for a leading
newspaper. He agreed to have lunch with me in a restaurant serving a
wide variety of Karnataka’s food. I let him do the ordering and waited
with the eagerness of the person who knows little and expects much.

The waiter arrived with two large thalis. As I looked at mine, the
first thing that struck me was the round-cut portion of banana leaf that
covered the silver plate. Admiring the seductive play of colors and tex¬
tures of food on a lustrous green surface, I was glad that the custom of
eating off these leaves was still prevalent in the South. It was, however, a
surprise to encounter it in one of the better-known restaurants in Ban¬
galore, instead of in a traditional home or a temple.

The first thing I noticed was that this was not going to be a vege¬
tarian spread. Fish and meat are eaten by the majority of the people of
Karnataka, and the spice-coated fillets of fish on my plate, aflame with
the redness of the local bedige, or bydagai, chilies, promised a gratifica¬
tion that was very different from what we find in fish-loving Bengal.
Portions of different vegetable dishes were ranged neatly along the rim
of the plate, and in the center was a small mound of rice. On one cor¬
ner of the plate sat two fried yogurt-cured chilies, their stems curved
into question marks. Fresh green chilies, which are an almost obliga¬
tory presence on a Bengali plate, don’t seem to be popular in the
South.

'‘Start,” said my companion. “Eat, and tell me what you think.”

Earlier, I had expressed a particular interest in sampling the coastal

A SOUTHERN THALI IN KARNATAKA

cuisine of his native city of Mangalore, a port on the Arabian Sea where
Karnataka meets Kerala. Although it was named after a local Hindu god¬
dess, Mangaladevi, Mangalore, located about 220 miles from the state
capital of Bangalore (the two names are confusingly similar), has a size¬
able Christian population—Catholic, born-again, and Protestant. In the
days of the Roman Empire, it was a frequent port of call for Arab mer¬
chants as they carried on the spice trade between Asia and Europe, and,
even after all these years, it continues to be one of India’s busiest ports.
In the past decade, Mangalore has grown almost beyond recognition, be¬
cause of the fast-growing software industry, the multiplying educational
institutions, and the prosperity engendered by remittance money sent by
expatriate workers from abroad. As everywhere in India, the rapidity of
this transformation made me wonder about the survival of the area’s tra¬
ditional cuisine.

Ajith Saldana pointed to some of the items on his plate and mine
(he had taken care to order two combination platters to ensure the max¬
imum variety of dishes) and said they were traditional Mangalore dishes.
But, as I reminded myself, what tradition really meant was less than
clear, in a country that has seen numerous waves of external influences
and internal melding. The chilies on our plates were a reminder that
almost every cuisine in India had undergone a radical shift with the
arrival of the Portuguese, who brought the capsicums from the New
World. Now the variety and ubiquity of chilies in India rivals that of
countries like Mexico.

The waiter returned and set down small glasses of peppery,
tamarind-flavored rasam and a basket of pale yellow pappadams. Again I
saw deep-fried yogurt-chilies, which had been casually scattered over
them. As I bent forward to inhale the subtle flavors, Saldana began to tell
me about the different cooking styles that had evolved in Karnataka.

“Economics and caste were often the defining factors,’’ he said, us¬
ing his fingers to mix a bit of rice with some vegetables. I thought of
the traditional demand for Brahmin chefs in my region of Bengal. In a
caste-based society, the Brahmin was the lord, and his touch the purest.
Food cooked by a Brahmin chef was therefore acceptable to all members

EATING INDIA

of the caste hierarchy, a factor that could even override a particular
chef’s lack of skill.

“The Hebara Iyengars, for instance,” my companion went on, “are
renowned as wedding cooks. Their sense of andaaz [estimate] is leg¬
endary.”

“What about religion?” 1 asked, following his example and ignoring
the cutlery, although most of the guests in the restaurant were using
them. 1 pointed to the fish and the meat on our plates, anathema to ob¬
servant Hindus, Brahmins as well as non-Brahmins, in so many parts of
northern and western India.

“It’s not that clear-cut,” Saldana said. “Take the Coorgs. They are
descended from a martial race that subscribed to animist beliefs and an¬
cestor worship before they became part of the Hindu mainstream. Then
there are the Bunts. They are a Hindu landowner community and, to
some extent, pioneers of the restaurant business in India, especially in
the South. They are known for their hospitality and lavish cooking. On
special occasions like weddings and festivals, they cook up elaborate
banquets. Some among these groups not only eat fish and chicken, as
Hindus do in your region of Bengal, they also eat pork. In fact, they
serve pork at their wedding banquets.”

I shuddered to think of the reaction of Hindu Bengali guests in Cal¬
cutta if they were confronted with a pork dish at a wedding feast. Al¬
though a Westernized minority happily samples ham sandwiches and
other porcine delights, most Bengali Hindus consider pork as bad as beef,
even though there are no quasi-scriptural injunctions about sacred pigs.
Ancient Hindu royalty hunted the wild boar and shared the meat with
guests. Apicius, a recipe collection from the days of the Roman Empire,
mentions a dish of wild boar seasoned with cumin and black pepper, and
I have always wondered whether the Roman chef got the idea for the
recipe as well as the vital ingredient, pepper, from India via the spice
trade. The domesticated pig of today, though, carries unhygienic asso¬
ciations. For many Hindus, it is a “dirty” animal, raised for food by the
lowest members of the caste hierarchy. To Muslims everywhere, it is for¬
bidden meat. It was easy to imagine that coastal Karnataka, however, had

A SOUTHERN THALl IN KARNATAKA

seen the trickle-down effects of a long association with the people of
neighboring Goa where the Portuguese had once held sway and Chris¬
tianity was dominant. Pork vindaloo is not only a general favorite in Goa,
it is also proudly served at weddings and other festive banquets.

Mangalore’s Christian community dates back to the sixteenth cen¬
tury, but their history is punctured by many episodes of cruelty and
harassment at the hands of different ruling powers—the Portuguese
who colonized Goa, the Maharashtrian invaders under the great Hindu
warrior-king Shivaji, and the Muslim rulers of Mysore (now a part of
modern Karnataka), Hyder Ali and his son Tipu. The latter was a great
warrior who foresaw the threat posed to India by the British East India
Company and repeatedly fought against them. Unfortunately, he saw lit¬
tle difference between a foreign power with colonial/imperial designs
and the local Christians (proselytized by an earlier foreign presence, the
Portuguese), who tended to look on the British as allies rather than en¬
emies. After one of his decisive victories against the British, Tipu took
revenge on the Mangalore Christians. They were stripped of their
wealth, forced to convert to Islam, relegated to the lowest and most me¬
nial of jobs, and sold into slavery. Those who refused conversion were
killed. Many were tortured. One particular Christian clan was spared,
however, because of its members’expertise in cultivating betel leaves and
areca nuts, to which Tipu’s soldiers, like so many other Indians, were
addicted.

Tipu met his death fighting bravely at the 1799 siege of Srirangap-
atnam (which the British referred to as Seringapatam, most notably in
Wilkie Collins’s novel The Moonstone). Most of the state then came un¬
der British dominion. The day before I had lunch with Saldana, I had
visited a small summer palace that Tipu had built in Bangalore. Relish¬
ing the cool shade inside, after being out in the sun for many hours, I
pondered Tipu’s tragic fate. He seemed to me like a character in a Greek
tragedy, a man of courage and heroism who is nevertheless fatally flawed
and meets his end partly because of those flaws. At least, he had left be¬
hind an exquisite architectural memento. The entire first floor of Tipu’s
summer palace is a hall supported by carved teak pillars. Colonnaded

EATING INDIA

spaces are a trademark of southern religious and royal architecture.
Stairs lead upstairs to two sets of rooms and balconies where Tipu used
to sit and listen to petitions, deliver judgments, and conduct state busi¬
ness. The surrounding gardens shelter the palace from the worst of the
summer heat. In that cool and airy space, it was hard to credit the story
about his cruel treatment of the Christians of Mangalore. In the end, of
course, despite Tipu’s orders for enforced conversion to Islam, those
who survived cruelty, imprisonment, and hunger went back to practic¬
ing Christianity after the British finally took control of the region. And
it is thus that pork continues to feature on the Mangalore menu.

Ajith Saldana happens to be a Christian from Mangalore and, as we
continued with our meal, his food stories complemented the intriguing
tastes on my Southern thali. With a gourmet’s enthusiasm he described
one of his favorite pork dishes, in which the meat is boiled with ground
mustard, coriander, ginger, garlic, and shallots. Garam masala, fried in
pork fat, is then added to the gravy. Another favorite in Mangalore is
chicken cooked with coconut milk, roasted and crushed garlic, pow¬
dered cumin, and the caraway-like seeds called ajwain or ajowan. Some
people, he said, laughing gently, call this dish “soul food.’’ There was no
time for me to eat this during my visit, but the mere description made
me think of trying to make it at some future date in my American
kitchen. I would not have the authentic local taste in my memory, but
who was to say that my enthusiasm would not be a substitute for
authenticity?

The Karnataka story I liked best, however, was about the alcoholic
who spent his evenings drinking with his buddies until he had no
money left. But however besotted he was, he always remembered to
bring home a small bottle of toddy (a liquor made from the fermented
sap of the palm tree) to ferment the dough for his morning idlis, the
steamed cakes made with a rice-and-dal dough, which are served at
breakfast throughout the South. These idlis, light and fluffy and imbued
with the sugary fragrance of the toddy, are called sanas.

According to Saldana, sanas can be eaten for breakfast since they
have a slightly sweet taste, but they are equally good when you dip them

A SOUTHERN THALI IN KARNATAKA

in the gravy of another Mangalorean favorite, sorpotel, a spicy pork
preparation in which black sausage, made with pig’s blood is added
for extra flavor. Remembering my earlier visit to Goa, I said that the
Goanese claimed sorpotel and vindaloo as their signature dishes, but Sal¬
dana emphatically dismissed the notion. But indeed there are remark¬
able similarities between the meat dishes made by the Christian
communities of Goa, Mangalore, and Bombay.

For the final item of this Karnataka lunch, we ate not dessert but
that odd Southern concoction called curd-rice-—small-grained rice
cooked with plain yogurt, seasoned (or tempered, as Indian chefs like to
say) with fried mustard seeds, a handful of urad dal, salt, and fresh kari
leaves. I looked at my portion in its little steel bowl and wondered
whether it would taste bland after all the spicy dishes we had eaten. I
need not have worried. Although the curd-rice is a chaser of sorts, the
discerning gourmet jazzes it up with a few yogurt-cured chilies. Fol¬
lowing my companion’s example, I plunged my fingers into the bowl
and crumbled a chili into it. The effect was potent. My first mouthful
brought stinging tears to my eyes.

I fumbled for my napkin and dabbed my eyes even as I relished all
the secondary undertones on my tongue—the delicate tartness of yo¬
gurt, the sharpness of mustard seeds, the strong herbal essence of the kari
leaves, and the soft, clinging chewiness of the rice. And then came
something else. Not a taste, but a scent, a maddeningly beautiful fra¬
grance, familiar yet unidentifiable. I was fairly sure there was nothing
new on the table that could have smelled like that.

“Your food is making me hallucinate,” 1 told my companion, laugh¬
ing. “First it makes me cry, then it transforms the smell of food into the
scent of flowers. I’m not sure I’ll survive this.”

“Flowers?” he asked puzzled. “Oh, I know what you mean. One of
the hostesses walked past you. Look, she’s standing over there. You can
see the jasmine garland in her hair.”

A jasmine garland. How many years had it been since I had worn a
jasmine garland? As college students, my friends and I used to buy jas¬
mine garlands to wear in our hair on special occasions, like weddings or

EATING INDIA

the Bengali New Year, or religious festivals during the monsoon, when
the jasmine is most prolific.

‘T wish I could find one for myself,” I replied. “I’ve been wander¬
ing all over the city for the last few days and in the evenings I’ve seen so
many women wearing these garlands, but I’ve never seen any flower
sellers.”

“It’s a matter of knowing where to go. But you can have one right
now.”

He beckoned to the hostess and, when she came up to our table,
asked her to get me a garland. To my astonishment, she quickly brought
a small tray with a fresh garland and a couple of hairpins. Delighted be¬
yond words, I wove the garland into my hair, making use of the pins she
had provided. This was an ending to a meal that went beyond dessert.

Afterward, I went to have a look at Nilgiris. Opened in 1905, it is pos¬
sibly India’s oldest supermarket. A magically unfamiliar world unfolded
for me inside. Shelves carried packages with names I had never come
across. Even the pictures on the packages did not tell me what exactly
some of the items were. I picked them up and turned them over in my
hands but, without a translator, could not make out the Kannada text.
Not everything was abstruse; there was the packet containing precooked
bisibelebhath, rice coated with spices that tinted the grains a dull brick
color. I read the English instructions for cooking. It seemed pretty sim¬
ple. There were other rice and vegetable concoctions, too.

They confirmed what I had been hearing, about the mini cultural
revolution in food coming out of the great information technology mi¬
gration from southern India. Most of the techies who go to the West on
temporary work assignments have no idea how to cook. Trying to save
money, they huddle together in small apartments or houses, and they
work long hours. But when it comes to food, many of them, especially
the vegetarians, can’t stomach the cheap foods available in Western
cities. Eating out everyday in Indian restaurants is an expensive proposi¬
tion, even assuming that such restaurants are accessible. Food processing
companies in India have taken advantage of this situation and begun

A SOUTHERN THALI IN KARNATAKA

producing a wide range of precooked, nonrefrigerated packaged foods
that these young workers can easily prepare for themselves. It is said that
the suitcases of migrant software workers flying out of India are filled
more with these packages than clothes. However, it is not simply the
homesick techie who is benefiting from the availability of such foods.
They are a welcome addition to the kitchen of busy working women in
India, too, who may be inspired to experiment: with people from one
region newly free to buy the packaged food of another, culinary hori¬
zons can expand with very little trouble. While the epicure might sneer
at the mere idea of easy-to-prepare meals, there is no denying their am¬
bassadorial role.

Nilgiris, being a supermarket, also sells fresh vegetables, soft drinks,
milk and dairy products, pickles, cereals, and other household goods, in¬
cluding its own brand-name tea. After a delightful hour of browsing, I
picked up several packages of yogurt-cured chilies. From the refrigera¬
tor near the counter, I also bought a can labeled Cocajal, containing the
water of the young green coconut, indubitably the most refreshing
drink on earth.

The Aryans who migrated into India from western and central Asia
identified the lower half of India as Dakshinatya, the southern realm, or
more familiarly in English, the Deccan. To my mind, it is the land with¬
out winter, a kingdom of the sun which is both a nurturer and a killer.
Survival here requires a peculiar kind of fierceness, even in a state like
Karnataka, a significant portion of which is green and fertile. A regional
folktale about hunger and food is a perfect illustration of this spirit.

A young woman lived with her husband and mother-in-law in a
small village. Life was hard for her; not only were they dirt poor, the
mother-in-law was also a virago who relentlessly abused her and treated
her like a slave. Every day, the young woman did all the chores and
cooked the family meals—which were mostly rice and vegetables.
Mother and son gorged themselves and gave her the scant leftovers. One
day the mother-in-law gave the young woman a huge pile of fresh snake
gourds (a long, slim vegetable, striped green and white, with a delicate

EATING INDIA

taste that blends with many seasonings) and asked her to cook them for
the midday meal. Tortured by hunger pangs and overcome by the deli¬
cious aroma of the ingredients she was using, the daughter-in-law de¬
cided that for once she was going to eat her fill. She made up a story
about a sick neighbor wanting to see her mother-in-law, and got the
woman out of the kitchen. After the vegetables were cooked, she poured
the entire portion into the pitcher she used for fetching water from the
river. Quietly slipping out of the back door, she made her way to the
village temple where the goddess Kali was worshipped. It was generally
empty at that time of day. Behind locked doors, she sat down and gorged
herself on the contents of the pitcher.

But although no human eyes saw her feasting, the goddess did.
Watching the young woman gobbling up such a huge quantity of food
at incredible speed, the goddess’s mouth fell open, and she raised her
hand to cover it. Blissfully unaware of this, the daughter-in-law let out
a large burp of satisfaction, went out, washed her pitcher, filled it with
water, and returned home. By then, the mother-in-law was back and had
discovered the trick played on her. Furious, she scolded the daughter-
in-law for being a greedy liar and viciously beat her with a broom, but
the pleasure of a full stomach made the young woman immune to pain.
The next day, the whole village was in an uproar, for the priest had dis¬
covered that the image of Kali was covering her mouth with her hand.
Terrified of catastrophic reprisals by the goddess for some unknown hu¬
man misdeed, the villagers went into a frenzy of prayer and ritual offer¬
ings. But the goddess did not change her posture.

The daughter-in-law then declared that she knew how to make the
goddess resume her original stance. She marched into the temple carry¬
ing a broom, locked the door, and proceeded to berate Kali for creating
such a fuss simply because a famished woman had sat and eaten vege¬
tables in the temple. “What is it to you, why should you care, you ma¬
licious woman? Take your hand down and restore people’s peace of
mind.” The goddess stood unmoving. Livid with fury, the young woman
then used her mother-in-law’s trick; she went up to the image and
thwacked the face several times with her broom. With a whimper, the

A SOUTHERN THAU IN KARNATAKA

goddess dropped her hand and stood as she had always done, arms by her
side. The village was awed by this miracle and even the wicked mother-
in-law began to fear her son’s wife.

Modern Karnataka was called Mysore (the Anglicized version of the an¬
cient Sanskrit name Mahishura) as late as 1973, when the Indian gov¬
ernment changed the name. Its recorded history goes back to ancient
times, when the region was conquered and ruled by kings from north¬
ern India. In the middle of the fourth century, two Karnataka dynasties
wrested power from these northern rulers, an indication of the long¬
standing North-South tension in India. The founder of one dynasty,
Mayurasharman, was not only a man of defiance and resolve; in a strictly
hierarchical, caste-bound society, he displayed a capacity for radical re¬
thinking that the modern generation of software innovators could be
proud of. By birth a Brahmin, he pursued his hereditary vocation as a
priest until one day when he was subjected to undeserved humiliation
in the royal court. Incensed, he abandoned his Brahminical life, became
a warrior (normally the preserve of the Kshatriyas, the second tier of
the caste ladder), and roused people to rebel. After toppling the ruling
king, he crowned himself the ruler of northern Karnataka.

For me, however, an even more fascinating figure belongs to the
twelfth century, a king named Someshvardeva II. He belonged to a later
dynasty, the Chalukyas, who came to power in the sixth and seventh
centuries and expanded their kingdom to include, not only modern
Karnataka, but also Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, parts
of Orissa and Tamil Nadu, and the greater part of Gujarat. Their do¬
main, lying between the two great rivers, Narmada to the west and the
Cauveri to the east, was the first great southern empire in India, a realm
renowned for its art and architecture as well as its wealth.

Someshvardeva II, however, was not content to be a mere ruler and
warrior. He was the author of an extensive Sanskrit encyclopedia, Man-
asollasa (a literal translation could be “The Spirit’s Delight”), which is
enough to convince any reader how important food was in ancient and
medieval Karnataka. Any notions of a meek, vegetarian Southerner die a

EATING INDIA

speedy death as the text outlines different methods of cooking pork,
venison, rabbit, birds, and tortoises. As for those who love fish, the
Chalukya text can give Izaak Walton’s seventeenth-century treatise The
Compleat Angler a run for its money. The king elaborates on the joys of
fishing as a recreational sport, mentions thirty-five kinds of marine and
freshwater fish, and gives meticulous instructions about fishing tech¬
nique. Not merely a sportsman, he also appears to be an enthusiastic
cook. One of his recipes—admittedly on the bizarre side—describes
taking the reproductive organs of large fish and roasting them on a fire.
When they have hardened, they should be cut into pieces, fried in oil,
and seasoned with ground cardamom, black pepper, rock salt, and asafetida.
Another suggests cooking fish in tamarind juice, sprinkling wheat flour
over it, frying it crisply, and serving with a garnish of ground cardamom
and black pepper. Tamarind, cardamom, and black pepper may seem a
wildly unorthodox combination to my fellow fish-lovers in Bengal,
but its essential Southern character is evident in many items on the
Karnataka thali (dinner plate) even today. The region’s most famous
dish, bisibelebhath, is seasoned with tamarind, chilies, cinnamon, and
cardamom.

Bangalore, the capital of modern Karnataka, has a food story em¬
bedded in its name. Originally, it was called Benda Kaal Ooru, or the
town of boiled beans. According to legend, a king named Vira Ballala
had gotten lost while hunting in the neighboring area. Tired and hun¬
gry, he came upon an old woman who had only a pot of boiled beans
to offer him. The king gratefully consumed them, giving the town its
name. Later, the British simplified the name to Bangalore. Recently, in a
show of anti-imperialist fervor that has also changed the names of other
Indian cities. Bangalore has been officially renamed Bengaluru, to more
accurately reflect the original Kannada version.

It is a relatively young city, established in the sixteenth century by a
local ruler, Kempe Gowda. Subsequently, the British moved the city to a
higher altitude, and it became a favorite zone for retired officers of the
British, and later, the Indian, armed forces. Although the residents tend
to complain about the growing pressure of cars, people, and buildings.

A SOUTHERN THALI IN KARNATAKA

the city appears surprisingly green in contrast to many other Indian me¬
tropolises. Relics of colonial times still abound, the most eye catching
being a glass pavilion in Lai Bagh, the city’s public gardens. Built along
the lines of the Brighton Pavilion in England, the structure houses the
Bangalore flovi^er show, yet another colonial tradition.

It was in Lai Bagh that I came across a familiar produce being mar¬
keted with a foreign label. Beneath a large, leafy mango tree sat a young
couple, the husband dressed in a blue sarong and white-and-blue
checked shirt, the wife in a red printed sari. Before her sat a leaf-lined
basket, with a piece of paper sticking out that said, “American corn.” At
least twenty ears of corn, the husks peeled away, displayed their bright
yellow kernels. But what made them American rather than Indian corn,
I could not fathom. I had seen a similar sign in another city—in a glitzy,
American-style food court, where a fast-food restaurant’s menu included
“American sweet corn” along with Western fast food like burgers and
pizzas. But I had dismissed that as a mere bit of marketing; after all, any¬
thing labeled American sells to the Indian middle class. In Lai Bagh’s
leaf-laden arbor, presented by two people who seemed more rural than
urban, the label was incongruous.

Besides, American or not, corn was the last cereal grain I was ex¬
pecting in Karnataka. The state’s contrasting geography has allowed sev¬
eral staple crops to flourish here—rice, wheat, sorghum, and ragi, a kind
of millet that originated in western Africa and is supposed to have come
to India either by way of Arab traders, or directly borne on the mon¬
soon winds. A surprising variety of ingredients and styles go into the
preparation of these grains. Coming from predominantly rice-eating
Bengal, I had been intrigued by the reddish grains of ragi—especially
when I learned that one of its original Sanskrit names means “the danc¬
ing grain.” A friend served me a salted porridge made from gently
roasted and ground ragi, which can also be made with brown sugar as a
breakfast food. I must confess that I did not like the strange slippery tex¬
ture of the porridge. Some grains, you have to grow up with.

The woman in Lai Bagh noticed my interest and held out a couple
of ears of corn from her basket. The plump, shiny golden kernels looked

EATING INDIA

fresh enough, though corn is not a food I am partial to. Despite my near
two decades in America, Tve never acquired a taste for the mild, sweet
butter-brushed kernels that friends offer on occasions like the Fourth of
July. If I have to eat corn, I prefer it the Bengali way—roasted over a
charcoal fire, brushed with mustard oil, and seasoned with lime juice, hot
chili powder, and black pepper. Only after many years in America had I
learned that corn was prepared in a similar way in Mexico and other
South American countries.

Regretfully, I shook my head. As she put the corn back in her bas¬
ket, I took out my camera to take a picture of her. The bright red sari,
dotted with white, yellow, and green, draping her dark skin and glossy
hair made a pleasing counterpoint to the yellow corn in her basket.
Suddenly, the husband was galvanized into action. He sat up and let
loose a torrent of objections whose meaning was clear to me from his
angry hand movements. He wanted me to put away my camera. I looked
at the woman to see if she, too, considered it offensive or unacceptable
to be photographed. For a few seconds, her face was unreadable, a beau¬
tiful mask chiseled out of the same native basalt you see in the statues
and temples of Karnataka. Then, turning to her husband, she gave him a
look of withering scorn that stopped him midtirade. Quietly she said
something before facing me again, signaling regally with her hand that I
could take her picture.

The steel beneath the surface of this apparently demure woman re¬
minded me of the folktale about the young woman who taught the god¬
dess Kali a lesson. It also deepened my regret at not being able to have a
real conversation with her. Did she herself eat the American corn she
was so eager to sell? Was it really significantly different from varieties
that were considered Indian? Did she know that corn really did origi¬
nate in the Americas, though its dissemination in India and other parts
of Asia is mysterious enough to have generated several expert theories?
Even if she didn’t, I had a feeling that she would have appreciated the
North American myth about a native people—those Indians who were
not from India—coining to the succor of hungry, distraught newcomers
from across the ocean, giving them corn, laying the basis for the feast of

A SOUTHERN THALI IN KARNATAKA

Thanksgiving. Ascribing symbolism to food and its sources, as well as
mythmaking about the offering and sharing of food, comes naturally to
the Indian imagination, as demonstrated by a bit of Karnataka history.
In a city near the border with the state of Andhra Pradesh lies the grave
of Muhammad Gawan, merchant, scholar, and minister in the courts of
three successive Deccan sultans in the fifteenth century. Despite his suc¬
cess and accomplishments, his end was violent. At the age of seventy-
eight, he was murdered. A mango and a neem tree, the latter, whose
bitter leaves go into the Bengali shukto, provide shade to his tomb, sig¬
nifying the sweetness of his life and the bitterness of his death.

But I could not speak Kannada, I could not tell the beautiful corn
seller any stories—mine, hers, or those of other people. We shared an
ethnicity, but it was not enough. I could only walk away in silence.

That evening, when I went back to the hotel, I got a call from Samit
Ghosh, whose Goanese wife, Elaine Marie, had once served me an ex¬
quisitely tasteful meal at their mansion outside Bangalore. Samit had
mentioned a Bengali culinary outpost in Bangalore, a branch of the
famous Calcutta sweetshop, K. C, Das, Over time, it has apparently
become a landmark among Bangalore’s eateries. The proprietor of the
Bangalore enterprise is Biren Das, the great-grandson of Bengal’s leg¬
endary confectioner Nobin Chandra Das, the inventor of rosogolla.

To me, it was an astonishing idea—that in a region so far from
sweet-addicted Bengal, a traditional Bengali confectionary selling
sandesh and rosogolla and other chhana sweets should be so successful.
It was the first real example I came across of the colonizing of tastes
within India in modern times, Samit, realizing how much I wanted to
meet Biren Das and have a look at the confectionary where the sweets
were made, had arranged a meeting for me. The next day, before going
to Das’s office, I went to take a look at his downtown restaurant, which
also doubles as a shop. The clients, instead of being nostalgia-ridden
Bengali migrants, were overwhelmingly local; the conversation all
around was mostly in Kannada, laced with a bit of English, with only
occasional snatches of Bengali and Hindi. The food was entirely vege-

EATING INDIA

tarian, but in the Bengali style. 1 saw plates heaped with the classic Ben¬
gali combination of luchi, slow-cooked potatoes, and a dal made with
yellow split peas. Small bowls of confections contained rosogolla, cham-
cham, rosomalai, sandesh, and many other items—a sweet, juicy, spongy,
milky, grainy, custardy, chewy assemblage. Any lingering disbelief I had
was dissipated—armed solely with desserts, a Bengali had successfully
colonized this distant Southern city. In a few decades, the children and
grandchildren of the people eating in his shop would probably consider
these sweets a part of their inalienable heritage, debating the exclusive
sense of ownership that Bengalis in Calcutta still have. A new chapter
was being added to the story of India’s evolving feast right in front of
my eyes.

Biren Das was waiting for me in the large building that houses his
office and sweets-making operations. Dressed in the traditional Bengali
dhuti-panjabi, he did not remotely resemble the success-driven MBAs
being churned out these days by Indian universities. But wandering
through the spotless plant where enormous quantities of milk are pro¬
cessed and made into fifty varieties of sweets provided plenty of evi¬
dence of his business acumen. Perhaps he saw some unvoiced doubt in
my eyes that led him to say, “Did you know that merchants and business¬
men in ancient India were called sreshthis, a word meaning ‘those who
are the very best’? They were expected not only to make money but also
to discharge their debts to society, do things for the less fortunate.”

Wondering if Bill Gates would like to be called a sreshthi, I trotted
along behind Das as he led me upstairs and downstairs through the sweet
labyrinth. Strange facts emerged. The milk is from Holstein cows; the yo¬
gurt culture for making mishti doi has been imported from Denmark
since 1980; high-quality sugar is imported from the northern state of Ut¬
tar Pradesh. And most surprisingly, the Bangalore operation is not new; it
was started in 1972 in response to the Bengal state government’s decision
to temporarily ban the commercial production of milk-based sweets, be¬
cause of an acute milk shortage that no longer exists. After the tour, Biren
Das, like a good host, took me into his comfortable office where an enor¬
mous tray of sweets waited for me. Knowing my limitations, I made sure

A SOUTHERN THALI IN KARNATAKA

to taste the Das family’s greatest contribution first, the rosogolla. It was
delightfully spongy and sweet. But it couldn’t quite eradicate the longing
for the remembered ones of the past—when I was a child, the rosogolla a
special treat, the cows native to Bengal, and the production less scientific,
less streamlined.

The success of K. C. Das’s Bengali sweets in Bangalore is actually not
as surprising as I had first thought. Bengali chhana sweets are famed and
appreciated throughout India. They easily fill the lacuna in southern
cuisines in which the favored desserts are different variants of rice pud¬
ding or vermicelli cooked in sweetened milk, while a second tier of
sweets combines coconut, brown sugar, and legumes. Ripe mangoes in
summer are another alternative. One item I found very attractive was the
chiroti, a flaky pastry, soaked in almond-flavored milk and dusted with
sugar before serving. The southern passion for coconut and palm sugar is
reflected in another sweet, the holige, a thin wheat crepe with a filling of
dried or fresh coconut and palm sugar, gently fried in a skillet. One Kar¬
nataka confection, surprisingly, reminded me of the rich desserts of
northern India. It is called Mysore pak, an artery-clogging, slow-cooked
halvahlike sweet. The ingredients are simple—split pea flour, syrup, and
ghee. But the proportions are deadly—double the amount of ghee as
flour.

The town of Mysore, about ninety miles south of Bangalore, is more
famed for silk and sandalwood than sweets. In the last few years, however,
it has also become a secondary center of software enterprise. On my last
night in Bangalore, I lay in bed and watched a television program about
the employee training center operated in Mysore by Infosys, India’s
largest software company. The trainees were an international group, in¬
cluding many from China. During lunch, they congregated in the enor¬
mous company cafeteria, where there were many southern dishes to
choose from—a luscious spread of dosas, idlis, rice, vegetables, and samb-
har. The camera focused for a few minutes on a group of Chinese trainees
sitting together. They were obviously enjoying every mouthful of this
alien food, but instead of using fingers or cutlery, they ate with chop¬
sticks. It was an amusing variation on the Grand Trunk Road vignette.

EATING INDIA

where I had observed Indian laborers shoveling Chinese noodles into
their mouths with teaspoons. I tried to imagine which would be more
difFicult to master—eating a dosa with chopsticks or noodles with a
teaspoon—and failed. Sleep overtook me, followed by visions of Biren
Das’s Holstein cows frolicking like goats on the green grass of the Infosys
campus.

Chapter Fire

The Anglo-Indian Table

After returning to Calcutta from Bangalore, I was unexpectedly laid low
by a long bout of sickness. Lying in bed for days, I found myself caught
in an acute tension between physical inertia and a champagnelike bub¬
bling of speculation about my unfinished project. The pull of unseen
destinations, images of their past and present fusing together, the pleas¬
urable fantasies about their food—all made the restricted quietness
of life within four walls even harder to bear. India waited, trembled on
the edge of vision, vanished, and appeared again to tantalize me with a
thousand questions.

As my health improved, I began to see my all too familiar surround¬
ings with a new kind of vision. My late parents-in-law had lived in this

EATING INDIA

apartment for nearly two decades. Rifling through the pages of old
books, journals, photo albums, and annotated music sheets, I glimpsed
their earlier lives. The glass-fronted cabinets filled with silver medals,
trophies, and awards spoke about my father-in-law’s long and illustrious
career in the military, before and after India’s independence from the
British.

I remembered the very first time I had come to meet them, and my
surprise as I saw the dining table set with plates, forks, knives, and
spoons. Even at home, it seemed, the retired colonel and his wife did not
eat with their fingers as Bengalis generally did. Coming from a family
that was firmly grounded in tradition, I found this unexpected colonial
fetish mildly repelling and intriguing at the same time. As our intimacy
increased, I realized that, having joined the British Indian Army at the
age of twenty-two, my father-in-law, Prabir Chakrabarti, had adopted
the culture of the British with all the enthusiasm of youth. Now, as I
looked through the relics of his past, I mulled over what little had been
disclosed to me and my husband by his parents before their death, and it
seemed that the lives of three generations of the family, from my hus¬
band’s great-grandfather down to his late father, represented yet another
facet of the story of changing cultures in India’s food.

Prasanna Chakrabarti, the great-grandfather, was a Sanskrit scholar,
fiercely dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and academic perfection.
Having heard of a renowned pundit in Kathiawar (in the state of Gu¬
jarat), he left Calcutta, journeyed all the way across India to this remote
western location, and enrolled as a student in the pundit’s select academy.
After several years of intensive education, Prasanna returned to Calcutta
and became a professor of Sanskrit himself. The late nineteenth century
saw urban Bengali society caught between opposites. The so-called Ben¬
gal Renaissance had already exposed the elite to modern Western ideas
and concepts, especially to a scientific worldview. Yet, long-standing tra¬
ditions and hierarchical systems continued to have a powerful hold on the
general psyche. At that time, an orthodox Brahmin scholar like Prasanna
would strictly observe many complex dietary rules and eating customs.
He would make sure that the food had been prepared observing all the

THE ANGLO-INDIAN TABLE

rules of purity and pollution set out in ancient Sanskrit scriptures. Sitting
down to eat, he would first distribute tiny portions of food and a drop of
water beside his plate, and dedicate them to the gods. What kind of strug¬
gles had a man like him experienced, caught between belief in observance
and the unpredictable necessities of a long journey? Did any involuntary
encounters—whether with the Jains, who carry nonviolence and vegetar¬
ianism to an exquisite extreme, or the Parsis, whose faith allows them to
enjoy practically every food under the sun, or, worse, Muslims, who hap¬
pily consume the Hindu’s revered sacred cow—generate a greater degree
of tolerance in him? Did it enlarge Prasanna’s view of the contemporary
world, even though he continued to teach a dead language?

His son Prafulla’s early career was different enough from his father’s
to support such a possibility. A brilliant student, Prafulla did not study
Sanskrit. Instead, he focused on a Western-oriented education, eventually
becoming a scholar at Christ’s College, Cambridge University. With a
“double first” in mental and moral science (philosophy) under his belt, he
went on to study law in London and became a barrister. On his return to
Calcutta, he had to undergo the pain of penance in order to be accepted
by Bengali society and to “recover caste”—penance that consisted not
only of feeding gods and Brahmins, but also having to consume cow dung
(a minuscule quantity, much diluted in water). But after that painful ritual,
he fit right in with the city’s Westernized elite and built up a successful
law practice. He married and had three children, two daughters and a son.

Most unexpectedly, however, India intervened. Prafulla, the quin¬
tessential sahib, was bitten by the “Swadeshi” (freedom) bug. Instead of
continuing with a lucrative law practice, he joined the Swaraj Party,
which, with its radical demands for independence from colonial rule, was
becoming a thorn in the side of the more moderate Congress Party led
by Gandhi and Nehru, which was willing to settle for dominion status
first before gaining full independence. The family mythology focused on
the primary achievement of Prafulla’s career as an activist—becoming the
editor of a party-funded newspaper called Fonmrd, which debated the
hot political issues of the day and exposed the shortcomings of many
politicians and government officials.

EATING INDIA

Neither my father-in-law nor his younger sister—Prafulla’s two
surviving children at the time when I met the family—had an adequate
explanation for their father’s radical change of direction. They were too
young to grasp what was happening in their father’s life, and the early
death of their mother left them mostly in the care of an elderly, wid¬
owed grandmother. During my enforced period of inaction in my in¬
laws’ apartment, I imagined the defection in terms of food. Like his
father, Prafulla, as a young man, had traveled a long distance from home.
But whereas Prasanna’s journey was contained within the greater Indian
cultural sphere, Prafulla had had to cross the ocean (often referred to as
“black water” in Bengal), leaving behind a world where food and touch
are inextricably linked from the earliest days of life. A traditional Ben¬
gali mother feeding her child is a prime example of this tactile connec¬
tion. She picks up a bit of rice and fish and vegetable, rolls it into a ball
in the hollow of her palm, and propels it deftly with her thumb into the
waiting mouth. From her, the child learns to manipulate his food until
his awkward fingers become the most exquisitely precise tools for food
of all textures and consistencies. Could there be a greater contrast be¬
tween this way of nourishing yourself and sitting down, say, at the col¬
lege dining hall in Cambridge, wielding sharp steel utensils to cut into
large portions of meat and fish?

Fanciful though it was, 1 couldn’t resist theorizing that when Pra¬
fulla the British-trained lawyer became disenchanted with the regime of
the colonial masters, he was also consumed with the need to resuscitate
intimacy with his own culture—the kind of intimacy that allowed him
to savor the sensuous richness of his native cuisine through the coming
together of hand and mouth. 1 imagined him taking pleasure in a small
gesture—discarding the knife, fork, and spoon for good, and eating Ben¬
gali food with his fingers.

On the social and political level, Prafulla’s change of orientation
from sahib to native was probably related to a growing awareness of
the iniquities and discrimination perpetrated by the British Raj in In¬
dia. His law practice would have exposed him to many such incidents,
and confronted him with the conflicts of loyalty, identity, and culture

THE ANGLO-INDIAN TABLE

that result from the encounter of races and the dominion of one over
the other.

A prime example of such conflicts v^as a community prominent in Pra-
fulla’s city of Calcutta—the Anglo-Indians, forever yearning to belong
to the ruling British community without ever quite succeeding. This
term was used in a broad and somewhat imprecise way; children born of
the union of Indians with other European races, such as the Portuguese,
Dutch, or French, were all loosely referred to as Anglo-Indians, but
mostly the term applied to those descended from intermarried Indian
and British parents. Originally, the British men who came to India
without wives and married (or formed liaisons with) local women were
eager to provide the best opportunities for their children and sent them
to Britain for schooling. However, developments in Haiti—the Slave
Rebellion of 1791 and the mulatto uprising of 1806—made Britons
more cautious about the children of mixed marriages. As a result,
Anglo-Indians were barred from education in Britain.

Despite that, the Anglo-Indians in India, always Christians, ordered
their lives, observances, customs, food, and festivals the same way as the
British, thus perpetuating the incongruity of a Western life in an Indian
context. Under colonial rule, they were given special professional op¬
portunities. India’s railways, for instance, were one of the preferred do¬
mains of Anglo-Indian enterprise. The 1956 Hollywood classic Bhowani
Junction, based on a John Masters novel, has Ava Gardner in the role of
Victoria Jones, daughter of an Anglo-Indian engine driver.

Among the local Indians, however, the Anglo-Indians, like mixed
races in so many places, often aroused distrust, bordering on contempt.
They were seen as pretentious, denying their Indian heritage to suck up
to the British masters. After the British left India, many Anglo-Indians,
fearful of their future, migrated to Britain, Australia, and Europe. Those
who stayed had to struggle for acceptance, but they and their descen¬
dants are now integrated into India as one of its diverse communities,
genuinely appreciated for their achievements. The Anglo-Indian com¬
munity in modern India may be small, but its members are noted for

EATING INDIA

their gregariousness, for the exuberance of their social life, their excel¬
lence in sports, the success of their men in the armed forces and of their
women in nursing or administrative careers, and, most of all, their hos¬
pitality, liberally laced with alcohol. In spite of adopting the British way
of cooking and eating (though they have never been averse to sampling
popular festive items like biryani and pilaf), they have also made inno¬
vative use of ingredients drawn from the land that has been physically, if
not always spiritually, their home. As a result, they have contributed a
small but significant chapter in the evolution of India’s food.

One accessory of the Anglo-Indian table (or, for that matter, the
British, or even the Japanese table) is a bottle of a condiment—
Worcestershire sauce. Indians like to claim that it is a native Indian
product, created by a quick-witted cook employed by a British or Anglo-
Indian master, in order to mask the taste of meat that had gone off.
According to the legend publicized by Lea & Perrins, the British manu¬
facturer, the sauce was born in Britain, an accidental byproduct dating to
the 1840s. A container of spiced vinegar (made by the chemist according
to an Indian client’s specifications) had been left forgotten in the cellar
and began to ferment. Before throwing it out, the chemist happened to
sample it and thus discovered its unique taste. In India, racial prejudice
sometimes manifests itself in derisive comments about Anglo-Indian food
being nothing more than meat and potatoes smothered with this all¬
purpose sauce. Nothing could be further from the truth.

One of the greatest ironies of India’s food story is of course the term
curry, whose blanket application is so much at odds with the actual au¬
thenticity, regionalism, and idiosyncrasy of India’s cuisines. This term has
its roots among another group sometimes described as Anglo-Indians:
Britons who had served their time in India and returned home to retire.
After a long absence, many of them had difficulty in adjusting to the life
of their native land. Exotic, exasperating India, they found, had seeped
into their bones, become the home away from home. The bland, unsea¬
soned foods that their compatriots were happy to consume left these “re¬
turned” Anglo-Indians longing for the spiced food of their colonial
domain. It was this desire that led to the birth of first-generation Indian

THE ANGLO-INDIAN TABLE

restaurants in England, the so-called curry houses. Soon enough, curry
became synonymous with Indian food, thus papering over all the sub¬
tleties of regional cookery and the variety of names—often precisely
descriptive—that identified different preparations. The Anglo-Indians of
India followed suit and used the term a/rry to indicate meat or poultry
cooked with native spices, as distinct from the roasts, chops, stews, and
puddings cooked in the Western way

Another interesting food mutation courtesy of the British and the
Anglo-Indian presence in India, is mulligatawny soup (a corruption of
Tamil milagu-tannir, pepper water), more familiar today in Tamil and
South Indian cuisines as rasam. The transformation of pepper water into
mulligatawny soup rests on the colonial need to replicate the Western
meal that consisted of separate courses. There was nothing in the Indian
cuisines that could be served as a soup course, with the possible excep¬
tion of the Muslim shorba. The British and their Anglo-Indian follow¬
ers therefore took the Tamil pepper water and made it into soup with
the addition of pieces of meat or chicken, stock, fried onions, and a
variety of spices. The invention is credited to the British settlers of
Madras in Tamil Nadu, who were sometimes referred to as “mulls” by
their fellow Britons in other regions. Within a very short time, however,
mulligatawny became a mainstay of British and Anglo-Indian kitchens
throughout the country.

Although I did not know it then, one term that was very much
a part of my daily life from childhood onward was also born of the
Anglo-Indian presence—tiffin, a snacklike meal usually taken at midday
In the days before I went to school, 1 would watch from the third-floor
balcony, the carpenters in my father’s furniture workshop take breaks
from work and sit around eating puffed rice, roasted chickpeas, samosas,
or, on very hot days, rice flakes soaked in cold water and combined with
shredded coconut and palm sugar. Sometimes, I ran downstairs and
asked, “What are you doing?” perhaps hoping to be offered an exotic
morsel. “We’re doing tiffin,” they would say and carry on, ignoring my
hopeful glances. Later, when days were spent in school, my classmates
and I were fed the traditional Bengali lunch of rice, dal, vegetables, and

EATING INDIA

fish at an ungodly hour of the morning before the bus came to pick us
up, since there was no such thing as the school lunch. To sustain us for
the rest of the day, our mothers gave us small sandwiches, fruits, and
sweets in modest-size lunch boxes. During midday break we ate this
food, which we called tiffin. Even office workers took tiffin breaks.
Among the Anglo-Indians, tiffin often consisted of leftover meats from
roast dinners, reshaped as pies or meatballs, spiked with a variety of
chutneys or relishes. One of the best known eateries in nineteenth-
century colonial Calcutta, the Great Eastern Hotel, offered its Anglo-
Indian and British clients tiffin consisting of ‘'steak or chop, bread and
vegetables,” for the reasonable price of one rupee. But one has to won¬
der what the main meals were after snacks of this dimension.

While the age of gourmandizing may be significantly diminished,
the Anglo-Indian community (most of it now in Calcutta) still cele¬
brates festivals with uncommon brio. Christmas, being the high point of
the year, is the time for magnificent culinary displays that combine the
riches of East and West. The holiday table in a prosperous Anglo-Indian
home can simultaneously accommodate roast duck or roast suckling
pig, vegetables, salads, rolls, and enormous platters of mutton or chicken
biryani. On other festive occasions, soup might be followed by baked
fish stuffed with Indian spices.

One well-known Anglo-Indian concoction, honored with the title
of chicken country captain, consists of pieces of chicken combined
with onions, fresh-ground ginger, green chilies, and a bit of black pep¬
per, fried in ghee and simmered gently with water until it is done. The
origins of the dish are shrouded in mystery. Some believe it was the
brainchild of a native captain of the sepoys (Indian troops working for
the British). Another hypothesis is that it was created by a ship’s captain.
Whatever the authentic story, there is no controversy about its delec¬
table taste.

Since the British tried to follow as much of their own traditions—
culinary, sartorial, cultural—as possible even during long stints in India, it
is only natural that their national favorite, fish and chips, would also be re¬
produced in their Indian kitchens. The fish that lent itself best to filleting.

THE ANGLO-INDIAN TABLE

breading, and frying was the bekti (bhetki in Bengali), a species frequent¬
ing coastal and estuarine waters. The traditional favorites of Bengal, the
rui, the katla, the hilsa, rarely made their way to the British or Anglo-
Indian table. As a result of the years when Indian cooks worked in the
kitchens of British and Anglo-Indian families in Calcutta, the term fillet
became part of Bengali usage, with the final t being pronounced. In a fur¬
ther instance of adaptation, the fillets of bekti were spiced up with a
marinade of ground ginger, onion, and crushed green chilies before be¬
ing fried. The accompanying tomato ketchup also entered the Bengali
kitchen through the mediation of Anglo-Indian cookery. When vegeta¬
bles like eggplant, pumpkin blossom, or cauliflower, coated with chickpea
batter and deep-fried, were served as snacks with tea, a bit of tomato
ketchup was often poured on the plate to add tartness to the fritter.

Breakfast in Indian cities, especially in Calcutta, which was the capital of
British India for a long time and where the majority of the Anglo-Indians are
still to be found, was one meal that was significantly affected by the colonial
experience. Although the Portuguese are credited with introducing Western
bread to India, it was the dominant presence of the ruling British and their
Anglo-Indian cohorts that led to the popularity of toasted sliced bread and
eggs (boiled, poached, fried, scrambled, made into omelets). Westernized In¬
dians, especially those who had the opportunity to go to England for higher
education, came back with many Anglicized habits, and it was in their dining
rooms that this Western idea of breakfast first acquired an Indian presence.
Since then, bread has become as common an item in Indian grocery stores as
it is in the West, and eating it is no longer limited to the urban ehte.

As children, my friends and I looked forward to Christmas with much
enthusiasm primarily because of the plethora of special cookies, cakes,
buns, and pastries that flooded Calcutta’s New Market at this time of
year. The suppliers were usually Anglo-Indian women of modest cir¬
cumstances for whom this was a way to supplement one’s income dur¬
ing the holiday season. While the market’s fruitcake or plum pudding or
shortbread was purely Western, there were other delightful items that
testified to the Anglo-Indian penchant for using Indian ingredients in

EATING INDIA

inventive ways. One of these, called kulkul or kalkal, was a deep-fried
sweet made with cake flour, semolina, eggs, butter, sugar, a bit of vanilla
and, amazingly, coconut milk.

Cooped up in my in-laws’ apartment, I watched the ghosts of Christmas
long gone in my childhood fade away into a far more distant past, when my
husband’s grandfather Prafulla lived in a city where Christmas brought out
the celebratory face of the country’s rulers. Had he, I wondered, had any per¬
sonal British or Anglo-Indian friends who invited him to their homes during
the holiday season? If so, had he cut the knot of friendship when he took up
the life of an activist? It was too late to find out. What is known only too well
is that Prafulla’s Ufe ended with mystery and violence. He started receiving
death threats, warning him to stop the political crusade in his newspaper.
One afternoon, thugs stormed the offices of the newspaper he edited and de¬
stroyed everything. A few days later, Prafulla left home, saying he would be
back in the evening, as usual, and never returned. His body was never found.
His children were left almost penniless. His son, Prabir, my father-in-law,
made a terse note in the family journal in which Prafulla had previously
recorded the births of his children and the death of his wife; “Father disap¬
peared on the 4* of April, 1938, from 3 Valmeek Street, Ballygunge.”

Prabir was halfway through college at that time. The tragedy forced
him to quit. He used his father’s connections to find a clerical job in or¬
der to support his sister and grandmother. In a few years, however, he
left the job and joined the army. He served in World War II—in Pales¬
tine, Egypt, and Burma—and, after India became independent, in India’s
wars with Pakistan and China. In the course of a long and successful
military career, Prafulla’s son reverted to the model of his father’s youth.
He staunchly espoused Western culture, enrolled his only son in a school
run by Jesuit missionaries, arranged for him to take piano lessons at the
Calcutta School of Music, tried to inculcate in him the rational, secular,
post-Enlightenment worldview that he particularly admired, and always
encouraged him to look beyond India for opportunities and professional
fulfillment.

For senior army officers like my father-in-law, military life continued
to be a throwback to the Raj, even as the country flexed its newfound

THE ANGLO-INDIAN TABLE

Indian muscles. The daily routine in peacetime included drinks in the
evening, get-togethers at the club, dances organized on special occasions,
and Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties with plenty of alcohol. The
officers’ wives also had to model themselves on the pattern of bygone
memsahibs—managing the servants, throwing parties, playing card games,
having midmorning coffee and gossip sessions, and learning to cook
Western/Anglo-Indian dishes at their ladies’ clubs.

One afternoon, going through a bookcase, I came upon two clothbound,
worm-eaten volumes— Mrs. Beeton’s Cookery Book and Mrs. Routleff’s Econom¬
ical Cookery Book for India. The latter proudly proclaimed on the cover, “Ninth
edition, revised and enlarged.” As I gingerly turned the pages, the past—of the
country, of the outsiders who had come and ruled it for so long without let¬
ting their Britishness be submerged, and of my parents-in-law, whom I never
had the opportunity to know well—rained out with the crumbling dust that
had accumulated for unknown years. Illustrations of archaic kitchen gadgets
and cooking techniques stared at me from the fragile pages.

Clearly, the books dated back to the days when my mother-in-law
was a young army wife, living in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.
My father-in-law was stationed in a small town called Mhow, whose
name is actually an acronym for Military Headquarters of War. It was
founded in 1818 by Sir John Malcolm, after he concluded a treaty with
the local rulers who had been resisting the British. After independence,
Mhow grew in importance as a training center for the Indian Army. In
the short time that I knew her, my mother-in-law had never mentioned
getting lessons in Western cookery during the years she spent in Mhow.
The food she had served me had always been the Bengali classics—fish,
vegetables, dal, rice. So, I wondered, what had she learned from these
books? Roast beef? Chocolate cake? Oxtail soup? As I kept turning the
pages, the books provided some kind of an answer. Old typed sheets and
small scraps of paper with scribbled notes fell out. Among the latter was
a recipe for guava jelly. Another nameless confection required two cups
of flour, one cup of sugar, a teaspoon of baking powder, two table¬
spoons of burnt sugar, one teaspoon of mixed spice (what?), sixteen tea-

EATING INDIA

spoons of butter, four eggs, and a small cup of milk. It sounded quite
enticing, but there were no directions to follow with the ingredients.

The typed pages were more definitive. Both were headed “Ladies
Club Meeting,” one dated December 17, 1965, and the other March 9,
1966. The first had a recipe for a walnut cake with walnut frosting,
and another for marzipan. The other page was titled “Pastitsieo [sic ]—
delicious dish from Greece by Mrs. Despina Sharma.” I presumed the lat¬
ter was the cooking instructor. The odd combination of macaroni,
minced meat, onion, tomatoes, garlic, garam masala, ghee, flour, milk,
eggs, and nutmeg did not seem Greek exactly, nor did it arouse much
confidence as a viable recipe. But perhaps it worked if you were bold
enough to try it. Here again was one of the countless examples of creat¬
ing a new dish through fusion, in the not-too-distant past, and attributing
to the product a fake authenticity—in this case, of the dish being gen¬
uinely European—that made it desirable beyond taste or texture.

It brought back to me the memory of my first visit to this apart¬
ment. That dinner table, laid with knife, fork, and spoon, did not seem
so incongruous anymore, even though my father-in-law had, by then,
long retired from military life. It was only one more facet of the multi¬
ple eating cultures that India has adopted and made her own.

By the time I was ready to renew my travels, I felt I had to start with
some kind of a pilgrimage. Perhaps it was an element of deep-seated su¬
perstition that generated the thought. The illness had left me vulnerable
in a way I had never been before. In a country that is overwhelmingly
full of believers of every faith, it was not unusual to have moments of
doubt about my own lack of belief. A current of thought ran through
my mind: perhaps even the gesture of a pilgrimage, mingling with the
faithful who forget themselves in the presence of a deity, and, more sig¬
nificantly, partaking of the offerings that were made in a temple, might
give me some insurance (however illusory) against further misfortunes.
It was exactly the way I had seen some of the elders in my family ex¬
press themselves in times of trouble, to my youthful outrage. Now,

THE ANGLO-INDIAN TABLE

I found a grudging kind of humor in recognizing the ancestral strain
in me.

After much pondering and poring over the map, I decided that the
destination had to belong to another faith. I would go to Amritsar, in
Punjab, which houses the holiest shrine of the Sikhs. Perhaps staying
all this time in my late in-laws’ apartment had something to do with
the choice. My father-in-law was a great admirer of the Sikhs, many of
whom were his fellow officers. He had spoken to me several times about
their bravery and generosity.

There was another inducement—the Grand Trunk Road, which ran
beyond Amritsar to the Wagah checkpoint on the border beUveen India
and Pakistan. Having seen its beginning near my hometown, I wanted to
see the end on the edge of enemy territory. Two faiths, Hinduism and
Islam, after coexisting in one country for a thousand years, had finally
become hostile to the point of Partition, an outcome shaped in the cru¬
cible of colonialism. The border, unyielding now for more than half a
century, would be an appropriate place to consider all the food and hos¬
pitality that had once transcended faith and bigotry, and served as the
coin of common exchange and human fellowship.

PART TWO

Chapter Six

Pilgrimage and Pageantry in Amritsar

The plane was late and the short winter day was long over by the time
1 reached Amritsar. For India’s dynamic and prosperous community of
Sikhs, Amritsar is what Mecca is to the Muslims. It is the site of their
most important gurdwara, the fabled Golden Temple, which stands in
the middle of an artificial lake evoking an ancient sacred “pool of nec¬
tar,” from which the city takes its name.

Coming out of the airport, I was struck by the conjunction of a
crescent moon and a rising Venus in the velvety night sky overhead. To¬
gether, they symbolized Islam, so vividly present across the border
(which is only twenty-two miles from Amritsar) in theocratic Pakistan.
Standing on the tarmac outside the airport, it was impossible not to feel

PILGRIMAGE AND PAGEANTRY IN AMRITSAR

moved by the sorrow and terror of the 1947 Partition of India, which
drew a thin red line through the heart of Punjab. But as I drove into the
city, the call to evening prayer rose from many mosques, while bells
chimed to the accompaniment of aarti rituals in Hindu temples. It was
a comforting reminder that for the most part, the two opposing faiths
do manage a tolerant coexistence in modern India.

As an adult. I’ve never felt much enthusiasm for paying homage to
the gods in shrines belonging to my own Hindu heritage. This is partly
because of the discriminatory policies in some temples, partly because
of the undisciplined crush of worshippers that often fills the temples,
and partly because of the predatory behavior of priests and attendants,
who not only demand payment for services (as guides, as interceders be¬
tween men and gods) but also insist on the visitors’ having to purchase
flowers and food offerings from the temple premises. The few times I
took my mother to visit the historic Kali temple in Calcutta, we were
buffeted and jostled so mercilessly that the only way to make progress
was to hold on to the grimy hand of the temple attendant as he pushed
ruthlessly forward. I found it utterly antithetical to any devotional or
spiritual impulse. The stone and marble floor on which we trod barefoot
was slimed over by the crushed remnants of flowers and leaves, and as we
neared the dark, enclosed shrine in the heart of the temple where the
image of the goddess was housed, the smell of fresh flowers, incense,
sweets, and human sweat combined with an age-old imprisoned odor
that repulsed me. If Kali’s temple was inclusive to the point of swallow¬
ing its visitors, it was a different experience altogether for me at another
temple in north-central Calcutta, dedicated to the god Vishnu. I hap¬
pened to be with a couple of Australian friends, who were utterly mes¬
merized by the intricate carved beauty of the temple spire—rising with
otherworldly splendor in the shabby heart of the city. But when the
three of us tried to go inside, several guards came rushing out to forbid
entry. I pointed out that all of us were barefoot. But that was not the
problem. In this temple, where Vishnu, the preserver of all creation is
worshipped, my blatantly non-Hindu foreign friends were inadmissible.
The same is true of the great Hindu temples of the South.

EATING INDIA

Given such experiences, the Golden Temple, which has weathered
many violent episodes and remains serenely unaffected by the clamorous
chaos of its surroundings, held a special promise. Aside from its physical
grandeur, it is renowned for the spotless langar (communal eatery) that
feeds all visitors, needy or not, Sikh or not, with unquestioning largesse.
Food, in the form of cooked offerings, is also served in many Hindu
places of worship, but the sheer numbers of devotees can make the eat¬
ing experience somewhat fraught. The Golden Temple, from what I had
heard, would be different.

Compared to Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, or even Islam, Sikhism
is a young religion. It was founded by Guru Nanak, born into a Hindu
family in 1469, a time when northern India was ruled by an Afghan
Muslim dynasty, the Lodis. A charismatic visionary, Nanak advocated a
new faith, based on love, egalitarianism, and belief in a nonincarnate di¬
vinity. His preaching accommodated both the Islamic idea that the goal
of religion is union with God, and the Hindu notion that through med¬
itation and good work, the devotee could purge himself of impurities
and achieve freedom from the cycle of rebirth. For his followers, how¬
ever, peaceful coexistence with these two major faiths was rudely dis¬
rupted in the seventeenth century, during the reign of the Mughal
emperor Jahangir, who punished them for what he perceived to be a re¬
jection of Islam. Through the subsequent years of the Mughal Empire,
Sikhs were subjected to intolerance and harassment, which had the ef¬
fect of transforming them into a martial community.

My meager knowledge about the Sikh faith only added to the mys¬
tique of Amritsar, as did an unexpected friendship I had formed in
the late eighties with one of India’s most eminent Sikhs, Khushwant
Singh—journalist, parliamentarian, and author of many books, includ¬
ing the magisterial History of the Sikhs and the wrenching novel Train to
Pakistan. I was working as a journalist and translator in Calcutta when I
met him, having returned to India after nineteen years spent in the
United States and in Bangladesh, where my fii'st marriage, to a Muslim,
had foundered. In my hometown, I found myself to be a woman with a
past, the subject of veiled disapproval in some quarters. Rebuilding a

PILGRIMAGE AND PAGEANTRY IN AMRITSAR

life and friendships proved difficult, something that Khushwant under¬
stood all too well. He encouraged me to focus on work. “Write well,
and you will find everything you are looking for,” he advised. Assign¬
ments often took me to Delhi, and I made sure to visit Khushwant and
his beautiful wife, Kaval, each time.

He used to laugh about the Bengalis’ obsession with food, especially
about their passionate opinions about the best way to make the region’s
signature dish, the fish jhol. Although he had grown up in Lahore (now
in the Pakistani part of Punjab) and Delhi, Khushwant had also spent
some time in Bengal as a student at Shantiniketan, the university
founded by the poet Rabindranath Tagore. On his first night there, the
young Punjabi boy had to eat his rice with the utterly unfamiliar fish
jhol. When I told him in 1989 about deciding to write a book about life
and food in Bengal, he made some friendly jibes about whether any
book would be long enough to suffice. Bengalis, for their part, tend to
write off Punjabi food as limited in variety and lacking in subtlety. But
what I learned from my visits to Khushwant’s home was that the hospi¬
tality of a Sikh is unstinted. The food was always tasty, and both Khush¬
want and his wife urged guests to eat well. When I decided to leave
India again in 1990 and immigrate permanently to the States, Khush¬
want Singh was deeply disappointed and said so. To him, it must have
seemed that I was giving up too easily on the struggles of resettling in
India. Maybe I was.

Despite visits to Calcutta and Bombay, I had not managed to get
to Delhi since that time. My correspondence with Khushwant was also
rather sporadic, but it was never difficult to get news about a man as fa¬
mous and controversial as he was. After his wife died of Alzheimer’s,
Khushwant wrote poignantly about their difficult though enduring rela¬
tionship, and about now becoming a recluse who focused only on his
work. When I planned the trip to Amritsar, I knew my first stop would
have to be Khushwant’s house in Delhi. Renewing the rare friendship
that had been his gift would give meaning to my pilgrimage to a Sikh
temple.

The visit was the perfect prelude to Amritsar. Khushwant has always

EATING INDIA

claimed he is not a particularly religious person, although his writings
are full of references, learned and emotive, to the poetry and philosophy
of the Sikh faith. He had visited Amritsar and the Golden Temple in the
past and commented on its extraordinary atmosphere of serenity. How¬
ever, he had never eaten in the langar.

“I didn’t think I could eat properly while sitting cross-legged on the
floor, rd get all the food into my beard,” he said, laughing. “And the
food is nothing special; it’s just your basic rice, bread and dal, not an
elaborate Bengali meal.”

That didn’t discourage me; instinctively I knew that eating in the
langar was about more than the food. Besides, as he pointed out, serving
everyone, rich and poor, with the same food, enforces the ideal of equal¬
ity. To me, coming from caste-ridden Hinduism, it was an attractive
notion.

We talked some more about his native state and its postindepen¬
dence prosperity. Spending a fortune on frequent multicourse
banquets—a notorious weakness of Bengalis—is not the Punjabi way of
showing off newfound wealth. They expend their resources on the more
durable acquisitions of property and business. And for ordinary people,
especially in the rural areas, cuisine is still limited. From October to
May, Punjabi farmers subsist on mustard greens, rice, bread, dal, and a
halvah made from carrots. Perhaps this spare yet healthy diet accounts
for the continued hardiness of Punjabis, their ability to succeed even in
new or hostile locations.

After an hour talking over old times, I left Khushwant’s house. He
saw me off with the promise to organize a dinner at his house after my
return from Amritsar. “Bring your friends, anyone you know,” he said
with the magnanimity I remembered from sixteen years ago.

After checking into the hotel in Amritsar, I had a light dinner, and fell
asleep to the sound of cars whooshing by. I woke very early in the morn¬
ing. Having made a cup of tea with the aid of the electric kettle and tea
bags provided by the hotel, I drank it standing by the window, watching
the morning mist dissipate. Directly opposite was an enormous building

PILGRIMAGE AND PAGEANTRY IN AMRITSAR

with expansive grounds. A large sign on the gate said, Khalsa College In¬
ternational Public School. Soon enough, auto-rickshaws began driving
up and depositing groups of schoolboys, most of whom sported Sikh tur¬
bans. The Amritsar morning had begun. It was time for me to start on my
pilgrimage.

The Golden Temple is located in the old part of Amritsar, where the
congested lanes were already aromatic with coal smoke, hot milk, and
fried goodies. I stopped in front of a sweetshop. Saffron-colored jilebis,
looking like sunflowers in a dark field, were being fried in oil prior to
being coated with syrup, watched by an eager queue that waited to buy
them. Moving on, I noticed with delight that the frequency of sweet¬
shops here almost paralleled that of my city, Calcutta. But what was very
different in Amritsar, according to many accounts, was a culture of eat¬
ing out, probably stemming from a long-established rural tradition of
women preparing their dough at home and taking it to communal,
open-air village tandoors to be made into bread. Even early in the
morning, the dhabas (roadside eateries) in Amritsar were doing brisk
business. And the clients were not merely itinerant truck drivers who
had stopped for a bite. Comfortable, middle-class men and women hap¬
pily dug into kulchas (a type of stuffed bread) served with a spicy chick¬
pea concoction. Amritsar’s kulchas, eaten only at breakfast or brunch,
are considered unique. The plump, soft breads made with refined
flour are stuffed with potatoes, onions, chilies, black pepper, cumin, and
pomegranate seeds, and baked in a tandoor. Lashings of butter on the
outside create the delightful contrast of a crisp exterior. Nowhere else
in Punjab can you find such kulchas. As I walked past one of the dhabas,
I saw a turbaned young man dipping a portion of kulcha into a chutney
that looked to be an enticing combination of tamarind, mint, and green
chilies.

This was a world far removed from Bengal, where people prefer
waking up to homemade tea and breakfast before they face the world,
even if facing the world means only a short trip to the market for the
daily purchase of fish and vegetables. I remembered the leisurely Sunday
mornings of my youth when my mother made luchis to be eaten with a

EATING INDIA

potato-onion-green chili bhaji (fried vegetables), followed by either
halvah or payesh. The halvah was usually made with semolina, sugar, and
ghee. The payesh was a sweet pudding, consisting of rice or vermicelli
cooked in evaporated, sweetened milk. Both were scented with cinna¬
mon and cardamom. To the Amritsar housewife, the idea of so much
kitchen labor in the morning must seem insane when you can simply
step out and get your fill of kulchas, jilebis, and hot, milky, spice-scented
tea. Some people even arrange to have their breakfast kulchas delivered
at home, along with the morning paper. Perhaps this tradition of eating
out instead of obsessing in the home kitchen has some bearing on
the fact that first-generation Punjabi immigrants in Britain created the
“curry houses” that became a fixture on the British culinary landscape.
Indian food, served by restaurants in the West, is still mainly Punjabi
food.

Punjab’s overall prosperity is rooted in the so-called green revolu¬
tion of the sixties. The fertility of the land, the industry of its farmers,
and their willingness to adopt modern ways of farming have all com¬
bined to transform it into the granary of India. Aside from huge quan¬
tities of wheat, the state also produces basmati rice that is exported
worldwide. The Sikhs are the dominant community here, but their pres¬
ence has a reach well beyond state lines. Sikh entrepreneurs have built
successful businesses in India and abroad, and Sikhs figure prominently
in the Indian armed forces.

The Golden Temple complex, built in the sixteenth century during
the tenure of the fifth Sikh guru, Arjan Singh, is supported and main¬
tained by the contributions of an affluent community, many of whom
work there as volunteers. The temple’s name derives from the gilded
exterior of its central edifice, the Harniandir Sahib, where the Sikh holy
book is housed during the day. A reminder of the martial nature of the
Sikh faith stands right beside the temple—a shop called Bharat Kirpan
Factory, which manufactures the swords that every Sikh male has to ac¬
quire and keep as one of the five sacred items that define him as a Sikh.
Inside the temple, however, the atmosphere is anything but martial. As
soon as I entered the outer gates, I heard hymns performed by raagis

PILGRIMAGE AND PAGEANTRY IN AMRITSAR

(singers) being broadcast through a sound system. The noise and ruckus
of the city outside and the clutter of my thoughts inside, all seemed to
fall away

Having taken off my shoes, washed my feet, and covered my head, as
required, I spent the morning wandering through the complex. At dif¬
ferent points, water channels had been cut into the marble walkways for
further automatic cleansing of the feet. I looked at the Sikh men and
women around me and wondered if such ritual gestures could ever wash
away all memories of the greatest crisis weathered by the Golden Tem¬
ple and India’s Sikh community. The marble walls were not only in¬
scribed with the names of donors and Sikh soldiers who had died in the
two world wars and in India’s wars with China and Pakistan, they were
also scarred by bullet marks from 1984, when Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi ordered the Indian Army to attack the temple where Sikh sepa¬
ratists had stashed arms and taken shelter. The fateful decision to launch
Operation Bluestar, as it was called, resulted in the assassination of Mrs.
Gandhi four months later by two Sikh bodyguards, and consequent na¬
tionwide riots in which thousands of innocent Sikhs were killed by irate
Hindu mobs. In protest, Khushwant Singh, who was a Member of Par¬
liament at that time, returned his Padma Bhushan, a high honor given by
the Indian government. But, I remembered, he also wrote appreciatively
about my city, Calcutta, where not a single Sikh was killed.

I shook off these somber reflections when I came to the communal
refectory, the Guru Ram Das Langar. It was lunchtime and people were
going up the stairway leading to the langar. But just as I placed my foot
on the first step, I found myself accosted by a stranger. “Wouldn’t you
like to see where they make the bread?” He was an elderly turbaned
Sikh, his gray beard neatly packed against his face with a net. From his
great height, he bent a friendly yet quizzical look on me, having some¬
how determined that my interest in food was both professional and
personal. As I followed him, he asked if, by any chance, I was from
Calcutta—my stumbling Hindi and Bengali features had often proved
to be giveaways in other northern Indian locations. When I nodded, he
told me that he had visited the city many times, as his son worked there

EATING INDIA

as a cab driver. It was a bond of comfort; Sikh taxi drivers were consid¬
ered emblems of honesty and reliability when I was growing up.

Despite all I had heard about the superachieving efficiency of Sikhs,
I was quite unprepared for the sight of the cavernous hall where au¬
tomation had replaced human toil. A complicated set of machinery
mixed the dough, made little pellets, flattened them into disks, rolled
them out into larger disks, and submitted those to an enormous oven for
baking. The final step transported the bread along a conveyer belt into
large bins that were then taken into the langar. The scene could well
have been part of Chaplin’s Modern Times. Earlier, I had come across
some impressive numbers. The kitchen makes 112,000 chapattis per day
and provides free meals for 30,000 people. As I looked at the awesome
conveyor belt, I had no problem believing it.

Turning to my companion, I tried to find the right words to express
my reaction. But he had no time to wait. “Come along, let’s go and eat,”
he said, vigorously waving me ahead.

In the langar, as Khushwant had warned me, one had to sit cross-
legged on narrow rugs spread on the floor. Before each person was a
large steel plate and a steel tumbler filled with water. From one door¬
way, I saw the servers appear, each carrying a large basket from which
they served the bread. But it was only when one of them came to a stop
in front of me, that I understood my unthinking gaffe. The bread is not
dropped onto the plate. You have to “receive” it, holding up both hands
in which the server places the bread. It was yet another moving re¬
minder of the beauty of the Sikh heritage, and how it had dispensed
with the two evils of Hindu society—caste and untouchability. I noticed
that some people in the row facing me were requesting and receiving
multiple pieces of bread, some of which they neatly packed into plastic
bags they had brought with them; provision for dinner perhaps, although
they did not seem poor. The Golden Temple, as I had heard before, made
no distinctions between the prosperous and the needy Ask and ye shall
receive, seemed the operating principle.

On the heels of the bread servers came others carrying steel buckets
from which they ladled out large portions of “kali dal”—legumes that

PILGRIMAGE AND PAGEANTRY IN AMRITSAR

had not been husked. After that, came the rice, not plain boiled rice as
we tend to eat in Bengal, but a pilaflike concoction glistening with ghee.
Once again, the servers surprised me. Instead of using spoons or ladles,
they simply took out handfuls of the pilaf from their buckets and de¬
posited it on our plates. A tactile though indirect connection bound the
giver with the receiver.

The meal had now been served—simple sustenance for a sturdy
people. For a while, I was pleasantly amused by the quiet vigor with
which people around me tore their bread, mopped up dal with the
pieces, and chewed the mouthfuls. When I followed their example,
the langar’s bread tasted like a cross between a homemade chapatti and
the naan bread one finds in restaurants. Its unleavened wheaty thickness
was guaranteed to quickly fill the belly. But it was the dal that amazed
me with its fragrance and its taste. I had eaten Punjabi “kali dal” many
times, in restaurants and the homes of friends. This, however, was ab¬
solutely unlike the rich, buttery preparation I had previously encoun¬
tered. There was hardly any detectable touch of fat. A faint echo of
ginger and some other unidentifiable spice made it a dish of which mul¬
tiple helpings could be consumed.

As I observed the quiet, almost silent contentment with which every¬
one around me ate their food, it occurred to me that religious sanctums
that serve meals on a large scale are the last bastions of culinary authen¬
ticity and continuity in India. The material world embraces change, nov¬
elty, experimentation, and fusion with restless avidity, while food in many
of India’s temples, whether Sikh or Hindu, continues to be immutably
rooted in the land. I thought of the daily meal cooked for devotees in the
kitchens of the great Jagannath Temple in Puri, which I had visited as a
child. What I didn’t know then was that, as in that Vishnu temple in Cal¬
cutta, this was a place where non-Hindus are barred from entering—an
exclusionary policy that, in my mind, casts a shadow over the beauty and
grandeur of the place. Thankfully, however, the caste system does not
hold sway there; thousands of Hindus freely come in and share the sanc¬
tified vegetarian offering called Mahaprasad, which is made according to
a recipe that has remained unchanged for hundreds of years. Many items

EATING INDIA

are prohibited, including onion, garlic, potatoes, tomatoes, cabbages, okra,
and green chilies. The reason is clear. They are either imports brought in
by the Portuguese traders from the New World, and even Africa, or they
are associated with the cooking of meat, especially by Muslims. The meal
in Puri’s temple today is likely to be exactly what was served to the deity
when the temple was built in the twelfth century, just as the meal in the
Golden Temple is what the Sikhs have eaten from the time of Nanak, the
founder of their religion.

Once everyone had finished eating, we took our plates and glasses
out of the langar and handed them to a waiting army of volunteers, men
and women, who would dispose of the leftovers and wash up. A look
backward showed me a new batch of people sitting down for their meal.
I said good-bye to my chance-met companion before heading for the
climactic eating experience.

In a separate kitchen, temple cooks prepare a halvah with semolina,
sugar, and enough ghee almost to drip down your fingers to the elbow.
People purchase the halvah to make their offerings to God. My small
portion was handed to me in a bowl stitched out of dried shaal leaves,
with a separate leaf placed as a cover. I followed the throng of devotees
who circled the central temple, praying and singing hymns while carry¬
ing their offerings. Once again, I admired the orderliness of the Sikh
crowd, and couldn’t help comparing it to the mad crush that had over¬
whelmed me when I visited the Kali temple in Calcutta. At the end of
the circumambulation, the halvah was considered consecrated food, ac¬
cepted by God. On the way out, everyone donated part of their halvah
back to the temple.

The concept and ritual of making offerings was nothing new to me;
it is also part of Hindu religious practice. So I knew that the unusual
lifting of my spirits was born not out of personal spiritual epiphany, but
rather from taking part in a community’s devotion without having to
prove that I belonged. The effect, strangely, was that of a shot of confi¬
dence. Any debilitating memories of my last illness fell away; 1 felt ex¬
pectant and capable, ready to move forward with my quest, with my life.
Watching the red-gold fish swimming gracefully in the temple lake, I

100

PILGRIMAGE AND PAGEANTRY IN AMRITSAR

ate the halvah with relish. Afterward, I made my way out to the earthly
realm of Amritsar’s crowded streets.

There is enormous life and history (some of it violent) crammed into
this part of town, which presents a stark contrast to wealthy residential
neighborhoods with gardens, garages, and plush mansions, glimpses of
which were presented in the popular film Bride and Prejudice. An older,
grittier, survivor reality pervades the old city. Long before the 1984 Op¬
eration Bluestar, the Golden Temple had suffered multiple attacks, not
only from the forces of the Mughal rulers of Delhi, but also by the
Afghan raider Ahmed Shah Durrani. Close by is the Jallianwala Bagh,
the scene of an infamous massacre carried out by the British general
Reginald Dyer. On April 13, 1919, crowds had assembled in the bagh
(literally, garden) to celebrate the festival of Baisakhi that begins the
New Year. General Dyer marched his troops into the gardens and or¬
dered them to open fire. The incident proved to be a defining moment
in India’s freedom struggle.

I wandered in and out of the poorest, most congested part of the
city—shops crammed on top of one another, houses with doors and
windows made of cheap, garishly painted wood, handcarts filled with
fruits and vegetables, hole-in-the-wall eateries where laborers huddled
with their hot tea against a chilly breeze blowing in over the northern
plains. It reminded me of scenes from the novel The Sari Shop, by the
Amritsar-based writer Rupa Bajwa. But everywhere I went, I was aware
of an irrepressible, pulsing energy—productive even in the midst of
chaos or despair. The residents of this city were living up to the out¬
sider’s image of Punjabis; they did not while away the hours over tea,
samosas, and talk, as my fellow Bengalis loved to do. Had the Punjabis
always been thus, I wondered, or did this urban energy stem from the
bloody upheaval of the Partition of 1947, when Hindus and Sikhs from
the Pakistani side of Punjab came into India, while the Muslims did the
opposite? Certainly the immigrants who crossed the border and then
made their way across the state and into the nation’s capital, Delhi, sig-

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101

nificantly reshaped many aspects of life in that city. Eating out there, for
one thing, was never the same again.

The westernmost section of India’s Grand Trunk Road once linked
Amritsar to Lahore, its sister city. Now, a mapmaker’s line, darkened
with blood and suspicion, reinforced by miles of barbed wire and deso¬
late stretches of land, lies between the two. Lahore has become a stepsis¬
ter, belonging to Pakistan.

It took me an hour to drive from Amritsar to the border checkpoint
called Wagah. The end of the 1,250-mile Grand Trunk Road ran
straight and smooth—bordered by ochre fields from which the wheat
had already been harvested, alternating with enormous expanses glow¬
ing with the yellow flowers of mustard, one of Punjab’s chief crops. No
wonder Khushwant had commented that the Punjabi peasant practically
lived on mustard greens throughout the winter. It remains, however, an
oddity that mustard oil is an obsession in Bengal, so far away from Pun¬
jab. In the distance, I could see tractor trailers, busily reworking the land
for the next sowing. On the outskirts of small towns, there were fat
cows and water buffalo, lazily cropping at the grass or resting under rows
of eucalyptus trees. Trucks overtook my car and passed by, loaded with
logs. I wondered what kind of trees had been felled for them. Even
small towns in Punjab were seeing a building boom, and groves and
stands of trees were vanishing at an alarming clip. After a while, all signs
of habitation and daily life fell away as the last bit of road cleaved
through the zone of emptiness that lies between hostile nations. Al¬
though I couldn’t see it, I knew that beyond the elaborate set of gates
and barriers at the checkpoint, there was a stretch of grassland with a
barbed wire fence—the real cleavage between the two countries.

The scene that greeted me when I got to the Wagah checkpoint
around four o’clock, was, however, more like a carnival than a war zone.
Trucks loaded to the hilt with all kinds of merchandise lined one side of
the road. Porters clad in vivid blue shirts loaded and unloaded rice,
wheat, dried fruits, blankets, and woolen clothes. Whatever the official

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PILGRIMAGE AND PAGEANTRY IN AMRITSAR

degree of suspicion, the spirit of commerce was intensely active here,
the only point between India and Pakistan through which people and
traffic are permitted to pass.

Since 1948, the checkpoint has also been providing a tourist attrac¬
tion at sundown—a ceremony called Beating the Retreat. It is a remnant
of the subcontinent’s colonial past, a bizarre combination of carefully or¬
chestrated lowering of national flags on each side, and repeated gestures
of mock aggression by the soldiers taking part in the ceremony. Hordes
of visitors turn up on both sides of the checkpoint every day to watch
the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) and the Pakistan Rangers go
through a twenty-minute drill calculated to arouse a high pitch of na¬
tionalist fervor.

After the first set of gates on the Indian side of the border opened,
we were herded into the visitors’ gallery the BSF has built. From the
shallow concrete tiers I looked across to the other side and saw that the
Pakistanis had positioned their gallery better. It faced the flagpost
around which the ceremony would take place, while the Indian gallery
provided a side view. The soldiers on both sides had obviously been se¬
lected for their imposing height and bearing, a further indication of the
importance of pageantry in this daily ritual. The Indians wore khaki,
with colorful turbans; their Pakistani counterparts were dressed in dark
green, with equally arresting headgear.

As the bugles sounded loud and clear, the ceremony began. Soldiers
on each side marched up to their opposite numbers, goose-stepping
deliberately, so that the bottoms of their soles were presented to the
enemy—a somewhat insulting gesture in the Asian subcontinent. Chests
puffed out like those of pouter pigeons, faces set in a fierce expression,
they put on a seriocomic show of battle-ready vigor, while military
commands were shouted through handheld megaphones. The crowd on
both sides erupted into a frenzy of shouting. I heard the slogans “Jai
Hind” (Victory to India) and “Vande Mataram” (the title of a patriotic
song) all around me, while several young men leapt up and began wav¬
ing the Indian flags they had brought with them. The Pakistanis were
not to be outdone. Across the distance, through the din of commands,

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103

bugles, drums, and cheers, I heard the shrill voices of schoolgirls—a
large group in white uniforms was clearly visible—shouting '‘Pakistan
Zindabad’’ (Long Live Pakistan). Finally, the designated soldiers on each
side lowered their flags, each of the commanding officers shook hands
with his opposite number and, as they retreated to their respective do¬
mains, the gates clanged shut. The sunset showdown was over for the
day. The soldiers could relax and the crowds could go home, all pumped
up with patriotic zeal.

The twenty-minute ritual could be interpreted as either a perpetu¬
ation of hostility or an attempt at making a connection through imper¬
sonal, long-established rituals. For me, though, it was the experience of
waiting at the checkpoint, prior to the ceremony, which left a lasting
impression. A cluster of little shops has sprouted near the gates, and they
do brisk business regaling the spectators with tea, coffee, bottled cold
drinks, and a variety of freshly made savory snacks.

It was here that I discovered that the Punjabi pakora can be made
with a very light touch, a far cry from the heavy-crusted, oily vegetable
fritters that usually pass by the name of pakora in restaurants. Savoring
narrow strips of potatoes and onions, encased in the lightest of batter, sip¬
ping from a glass (none too clean) of milky tea scented with cardamom, I
watched my fellow Indians eat and drink with gusto. Although the brand
names of the West—McDonald's or Subway or Domino’s—had not
reached this far, odd-shaped buns enclosing ground lamb and chicken
were being sold as burgers, along with Coke, Pepsi, 7-UP, and their Indian
versions. Sitting there, I began to feel the effects of the endlessly retold
bloody history of Partition slowly begin to seep away. Beyond the gates
of the checkpoint, lay the rolling fence of barbed wire, silently screaming
“Keep out” at anyone who dared to come too near. But on this side, at
the Indian end of the Grand Trunk Road, surrounded by a crowd of
happy eaters, I felt strangely exuberant. Partition may never be undone;
but in the interstices of war and anger, hands can stretch out and offer a
pakora, a samosa, a sandwich, even a whole plateful of rice, bread, dal,
vegetables, and meat. As long as food can be enjoyed and exchanged, we
can all be pilgrims of a sort, and hope to survive as a species.

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The lingering effect of that hopefulness added zest to what 1 later
ate for dinner at a restaurant on Lawrence Road in downtown Amritsar.
Called simply Amritsari machhi, it was pieces of freshwater fish, from
the nearby Beas River, coated in a batter infused with the muted pun¬
gency of powdered ajwain that had been liberally used to season it.
While I ate, I observed the families of Amritsar crowding the restaurant.
The food on their plates was relatively simple—chicken, meat, and fish,
marinated and cooked in the tandoor or fried in batter; chicken and
meat in a rich sauce that incorporated yogurt, powdered almond, and
ground-up fried onion. There were several types of bread, including the
makki ki roti, made with coarse-ground corn flour; bowls of thick dal;
and of course, sarson ka saag (mustard greens) stewed with ginger and
ghee. Perhaps, at the end of the meal, some would order the other win¬
ter staple that Khushwant had mentioned, a rich halvah made with
grated carrots, ghee, sugar, and dried milk. But I didn’t stay to watch. 1
had to make an early start the next day and go back to Delhi—to see
Khushwant again, and explore the culinary mosaic of a city that has
played host to ruler and ruled for many centuries.

“So, how was Amritsar; did you go to the temple?” Khushwant asked me
when 1 arrived at his house for dinner the next evening. He gestured to¬
wards the predinner spread on the living room table—smoked salmon
on toast, spicy potato chips, a bowl of nuts, a bottle of wine. 1 helped
myself and described my meal at the langar. Though he laughed at the
extent to which I was willing to go in search of a new eating experi¬
ence, I could see he was also touched by my admiration of this aspect of
Sikhism.

Dinner, served notoriously early by Indian standards (“we eat at
seven thirty and retire at nine,” Khushwant always tells his guests, with¬
out exaggeration), was simple but delicious. His daughter, who lives
next door and supervises his housekeeping, had made sure of it. There
was the traditional Punjabi pilaf but, unlike the one served in the tem¬
ple, this was enhanced with expensive spices and nuts. A delicate yellow
dal and a spicy dish of green peas presented a pleasing contrast. The

EATING INDIA

105

final item was an enormous bowl of hariyali murgh—chicken in a gravy
green with pureed cilantro, spinach, and* fenugreek leaves, its taste deli¬
cate yet tantalizing. The small group of guests happily dug in, but I no¬
ticed that Khushwant himself did not touch the chicken. He preferred
eating light at dinner, he said, spooning some yogurt over his rice and
vegetables. When lychees and ice cream were served for dessert, he con¬
tented himself with a small portion of ice cream.

Throughout the meal, Khushwant made many references to his child¬
hood in Lahore and to the home village in Pakistan. He was a survivor of
the Partition. The border and the barbed wire I had seen only a couple of
days earlier had cut into his life and memory in a deeper way than I
would ever really understand. Yet there was no trace of bitterness or big¬
otry in him. The loss of part of his country had saddened him, but had
neither made him intolerant, nor dented his faith in his fellow man.

Under cover of conversation that occasionally bordered on the rib¬
ald (Khushwant has always been notorious for his lack of inhibition), I
watched him carefully. The gnarled hands with which he mixed his food
displayed their knuckles and veins more prominently than I remem¬
bered. But even at ninety, he continued to have a robust enjoyment
of life. He loved his evening glass of whiskey and relished his meals,
however modest his chosen portion. And he continuously exhorted his
guests to take more, to eat well. From my previous visits, seventeen years
ago, a woman’s voice also sounded in my ears—“Come, beta [child],
help yourself,” she had said as she held different dishes for me. Were she
present, she would approve of the way her husband was looking after his
guests, as would the spirits of the Sikh gurus who had created the
Golden Temple.

My pilgrimage was a success. I knew I would not let myself be
haunted by undue anxieties about getting sick again. No matter what my
future travels portended, whatever disappointments I faced, I knew that a
few gratifying meals like this could give me the energy to deal with them.
I left the table replete with the savor of renewed connection, of the tri¬
umph of love over time.

Chapter Seven

Banquets of the Imperial
Palace—Muslim Style

It is often easy to forget that the arrival of the Muslims was the first ma¬
jor external influence to radically reshape cooking and eating in India.
The country’s haute cuisine—which, for a thousand years, has been Is¬
lamic imperial cuisine—was born in Delhi and developed to a point of
exquisite, almost overblown refinement. From there, it branched into
two distinctive offshoots in two other centers of Muslim power: Luck¬
now, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, and Hyderabad, capital of the south¬
ern state of Andhra Pradesh. The long history of Muslim rule—going
back to the eleventh century when the invading Turks from Afghanistan

EATING INDIA

107

descended on India, and ending in the nineteenth century when the
British exiled the last Mughal ruler from Delhi—helped to consolidate
the union of foreign and indigenous influences in India. It is a story
of violent impact, slow, begrudging exchange, and eventual integra¬
tion. Although the sultans, badshahs, nawabs and nizams—the titles of
Muslim royalty in India—have long been replaced by other powers,
they have left behind a courtly redolence that enchants both palate and
imagination.

Growing up in a middle-class family, I was prone to indulge in
gilded fantasies that included the image of an imperial couple (nameless,
but clearly resembling the schoolbook portraits of the most romantic
Mughal ruler, Shahjahan, and his immortal beloved Mumtaz Mahal)
seated on a plush carpet before an array of gold and silver plates loaded
with exotic meats, breads, pilafs, and desserts. In the twenty-first cen¬
tury, I did not expect to meet any members of royalty, but the prospect
of tracking down a reasonably authentic reproduction of the dishes that
used to be made in their kitchens was exciting. Delhi was the obvious
starting point, and the day after my memorable dinner with Khushwant,
I began my explorations. Later, I planned to travel to Lucknow and
Hyderabad.

It is in the older sections of Delhi that the receptive nose is more
likely to pick up the aromas of the pilafs, biryanis, kebabs, koftas, and a
host of other dishes that the Muslims brought to India with them, and
which India enriched with her spices and flavors. The centerpiece of the
imperial spread was the dish that still carries a primarily Islamic aura—
the pilaf (pulao, pilav, pallao in transliterated Persian and Arabic), rice
cooked with ghee and spices, sometimes with meat. As with so much in
India, there are conflicting opinions as to the authenticity of pilaf as an
original Muslim creation, since some ancient Hindu texts, written in San¬
skrit, describe a similar dish. Even more confusing, the word biryani,
which we now think of exclusively to mean rice cooked with meat, was
used interchangeably with pilaf as late as the sixteenth century. Whatever
the authentic origins, the exquisite refinement of a well-made pilaf or
biryani today is the product of many influences. India’s first Islamic rulers

108

BANQUETS OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE

or sultans, the Turkish conquerors from Afghanistan, were certainly not
noted for sophisticated cooking and eating. Like all martial and nomadic
races, they were used to quick-grilled meats, cheese, yogurt, bread, and
rice, supplemented with whatever fruit or produce was locally available.
Once settled in their new realm whose wealth and resources must have
seemed boundless after the starkness of the mountains and grasslands of
Central Asia and Afghanistan, they probably imported sophisticated pilafs
and other delicacies befitting royalty, from Persia (modern Iran), which
already had a well-established, cultivated culinary tradition. As Delhi be¬
came a flourishing Muslim city under the Turkish sultans, many foreign¬
ers migrated there in search of opportunities. Among them were gifted
chefs whom the sultans happily welcomed to the royal kitchens. One of
the great travelers of all time, Ibn Battuta of Tangiers, Morocco, visited
sultanate Delhi and ended up staying for twenty years. His detailed, witty
observations not only paint a fascinating picture of the whimsical largesse
of the ruler, they also hold up a mirror to the culinary and social mores
of the times.

The second wave of Muslim rule came with the Mongol (or
Mughal, as we say in India, following the mispronunciation of the
British; the U.S. spelling is Mogul) conqueror Babur when he marched
into Delhi after defeating Sultan Ibrahim Lodi at the battle of Panipat in
April 1526. Although Babur was no epicure or sybarite, one of the few
times he mentions the details of a meal in his famous autobiography, the
Bahurnama, indicates that the Persian influence was already at work in
the royal kitchen. An attempt on his life was made by the mother of the
dead Sultan Ibrahim. She bribed a cook to poison a dish served at din¬
ner, described by Babur as “thin bread” on which the powdered poison
was strewn and covered with a layer of “meat dressed in oil.” But before
touching this, Babur ate “a lot of rabbit stew and had quite a bit of
dressed saffroned meat.” Cooking meat with saffron was very much
an Islamic, Persian custom. Fortunately for Babur, he survived the at¬
tempted assassination because, stuffed with other dishes, he ate only a
tiny bit of the poisoned food. But the story is a reminder of the intimate

EATING INDIA

109

connection between food, poison, and power in the history of great
kingdoms. Lucrezia Borgia is by no means an anomaly.

It was with Babur’s descendants, particularly his grandson Akbar, who
consolidated Mughal power in northern India, that the refinement of food
and culture in the imperial court took a quantum leap forward. A historical
document glorifying the reign of the emperor Akbar, the Ain4-Akbari, writ¬
ten by Abul Fazl, describes pilaf made with rice, minced meat, tons of ghee,
and seasonings that include onion, ginger, pepper, cumin seed, cardamom,
and cloves. Another pilaf, called navratan (nine jewels), was created by an im¬
perial chef in honor of the nine great intellectuals at the Emperor’s court. We
can be reasonably sure, however, that the rice used in these pilafs was not the
aromatic basmati we are so familiar with today. Basmati (or an ancestral culti-
var) is said to have been brought to Dehra Dun in northern India much later
by Dost Mohamed, an Afghan ruler who was deposed by the British in 1840.
The aristocrats among the rice crops of ancient and medieval India were the
‘‘shali” rice strains that grew in a wide variety of terrain and, when cooked,
became soft and fluffy even while the grains remained completely separate—
ideal for a pilaf The “sticky” rice varieties favored in Chinese and Japanese
cooking or in the Italian risotto have not had much currency in India.

Meals, whether in the royal palace or the poor man’s hovel, whether
in a Muslim or a Hindu household, were traditionally served either on a
cleaned floor or on a very low platform, prior to the popularization of
chairs and tables used by Europeans. In the Mughal palace, the diners sat
on rich carpets, which were covered by clean white sheets at mealtimes
to avoid their being stained by the food. After rinsing their hands with
perfumed water poured by servants, the royal family chose their favorite
items and ate off jade plates—a safety measure, since jade was supposed
to change color if it came into contact with most of the known poisons
of the day.

Akbar, possibly the greatest of the Mughal emperors, liked to regale
his guests occasionally with banquets serving as many as five hundred
dishes, but was abstemious when it came to addictive substances. His son
and grandson, Jahangir and Shahjahan (the builder of the Taj Mahal)

110

BANQUETS OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE

respectively, enjoyed alcohol and opium and further encouraged devel¬
opment of the luxuries of courtly life. The numerous items served in
their banquet halls included dishes richly doused with ghee and cleverly
seasoned with spices. A huge variety of game birds, fish, beef, and lamb
were cooked in an equally varied style. Marinating meat in yogurt and
cooking methods like dum pukht, whereby the meat was sealed in a pot
and cooked very slowly over a low fire, produced delectably tender
meat.

Aside from spices, the cooks in the Mughal imperial kitchen used dried
fruit in their meat and rice dishes, a custom inherited from the culinary prac¬
tices of Turkey and Iran. Mughal rulers from Babur onward were extremely
fond of formal gardens, and planted fruit trees all over the territories they
conquered. From the fertile orchards of Kashmir, they also imported fruits of
the temperate zone—peaches, plums, grapes, apples, apricots, pears. In and
around their palaces, they promoted the cultivation and cross-breeding of
many strains of India’s native mangoes. Later, as European traders, most no¬
tably the Portuguese, brought in different fruits and vegetables from the New
World, the Mughal chefs adapted their cooking to include these items. By
Shahjahan’s time, the chili pepper was a familiar ingredient, supplementing or
supplanting the indigenous black pepper. Overall, however, surviving recipes
from the royal kitchen indicate a surprisingly limited use of spices in the pi-
lafs and biryanis produced. Cinnamon, cardamom, clove, black pepper, co¬
riander seeds, fennel seeds, and fresh ginger were the common ingredients.
Flavor was enhanced with the use of yakhni, a stock made by cooking meat
and spices and straining the juices through muslin. The Mughals also seemed
to have had a predilection for sweet-and-sour tastes, which the chefs created
by adding sugar and lemon syrup to the pilafs.

The enormous scale and richness of Delhi is a far cry from Amrit¬
sar, which I had visited only a few days earlier. Of all the Mughal em¬
perors, it is Shahjahan who has left the greatest imprint on the city.
Although we tend to think solely of the Taj Mahal in Agra when Shah¬
jahan is mentioned, he is responsible for many magnificent edifices, in¬
cluding Delhi’s Red Fort and the Jama Masjid. One evening, shortly
after the call for Maghreb prayers had died away under a blue-black sky.

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I found myself in a lane near the Jama Masjid, reliving my schoolgirl
fantasies about the emperor and empress sitting do\vn to dinner in the
fort’s zenana (women’s quarters). I visualized all the different pilafs be¬
ing served on the dastarkhwan, the medieval Islamic equivalent of a
tablecloth. Samosa pilaf might have been one of them. Like all fancy pi¬
lafs, it consisted of rice, meat, stock, ghee, and spices, but the distinctive
touch came from tiny, delicate meat-filled samosas that were strewn over
the pilaf just before serving. A recipe for samosa pilaf, outlined in a Per¬
sian cookbook called Nuskha-e-Shahjahani, translated into English by
Salma Husain, includes instructions for samosa-making that require
both finesse and patience:

Make a mince of the remaining meat. Cook with ginger, onion,
and garam masala. When cooked, cool and grind to a fine paste.
Knead flour with roasted gram flour, white of an egg, and a little
ghee. Roll pooris as thin as a betel leaf. Put cooked minced meat
in the center, cover with another poori, place a betel leaf on the
top. Repeat the process ten times. Seal [samosas] from all sides.
Boil water in a pan, cover the pan with a muslin cloth, place
samosas over it and steam. Make small cuts on three sides, leave
one side intact, remove betel leaf from samosas, and deep fry
them.

I tried to imagine rolling out a sheet of dough to the fineness of a
betel leaf in my own kitchen and decided it should remain in the do¬
main of fantasy. For a modern taste of the imperial food of the past, I
was better off going to a restaurant called Karim’s, a Delhi institution
with an impeccable Mughal pedigree. Like the food it serves, the restau¬
rant has its own mythology. Karim’s was founded in 1913 by Haji
Karimuddin, whose ancestor is supposed to have come to India from
Arabia in the sixteenth century as a soldier of fortune who found em¬
ployment in Babur’s army. Some of his descendants became chefs in the
Mughal imperial kitchen and continued in this hereditary post until the
last ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was exiled by the British. The courtiers

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BANQUETS OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE

and staff in the imperial palaces also had to leave the city. But many of
them gradually came back and created new lives in a British-controlled
city, among them the man who founded Karim’s restaurant, with the
purported aim of serving royal cuisine to the common man. Since then,
Karim’s has maintained its undisputed status, as one of Delhi’s finest, and
branched out with another restaurant in a New Delhi neighborhood
called Nizamuddin.

The menu is predominantly nonvegetarian, as one would expect, and
some of the dishes are named after the emperors—Akbar, Jahangir, and
Shahjahan—^and even after Anarkali, a dancing girl Jahangir was enam¬
ored of when he was a young prince. Business being business, the menu
also includes the ubiquitous Punjabi dishes like butter chicken and
chicken tikka. It is, however, the simple items that revive the memory of
past greatness, as I realized once I dipped my spoon into a bowl of Mut¬
ton Yakhni. Soup has never been a very important part of the Indian
meal, Hindu or Muslim, as the British found to their chagrin. But
Karim’s yakhni, whether you call it stock or soup, caresses the tongue and
slides down the throat with a flavorful delicacy that is beyond words. It
promises the consumer a range of other dishes made with the same kind
of selectivity of spicing and technique that is documented in seventeenth-
century cookbooks, even though the quantities of ghee have been mini¬
mized, and sometimes substituted with oil. Eating Karim’s Murgh
Biryani Anarkali, I remembered the tragic legend of Anarkali. Her beauty
was so great, her hold over Jahangir (then the crown prince) so strong,
that the emperor Akbar considered her a threat to the kingdom. Con¬
victed on a trumped-up charge, she was supposedly given a particularly
brutal death sentence—being walled up alive. Not a story to stimulate the
appetite, but then who said the glory days of empire, any empire, were
free of gratuitous cruelty? As I ate, the resonance of the past was rein¬
forced by the growing animation of the conversation from a neighboring
table. A large group of men were eating with gusto, their table so full
of items they had ordered that their dinner plates were precariously bal¬
anced on the edge. I did not understand their words, but their language
riveted me—Farsi, once widely used in India as the official language of

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the Mughal court. Visitors from Iran, I learned from my waiter, not rein¬
carnated figures from a bygone era. But I was grateful for the ambience
they added to my meal.

Despite Delhi’s long history with the Muslims and the extensive architec¬
tural remains they have left behind, many Hindu historians like to focus
on a far older past, when Delhi was supposedly the site of an ancient cap¬
ital city, Indraprastha, mentioned in the Mahabharata. To me, those ac¬
counts confirm not only the longtime significance of this bit of real
estate, but also the duality of the Hindu-Muslim identity that has shaped
India over the past thousand years. Power can be both real and illusory,
and the story of Indraprastha, the chief city of a kingdom ruled by the
five Pandava brothers, is rich with intimations of illusion, grandeur, envy,
and conflict. According to the Mahabharata, the Pandavas’ royal palace, an
extravaganza of glittering gems and crystals, of extensive grounds laid out
with lakes and gardens and arbors, was built with magical materials by a
demonic architect, himself a master of illusions. When the rivals of the
Pandavas, their wicked cousins of the Kaurava family, were invited to see
the palace, they were burned up with envy and hatred, for they knew that
such a palace could never be theirs.

To make matters worse, the eldest Kaurava prince, Duryodhana, suf¬
fered repeated public humiliation as he failed to distinguish between glass
and water, between emptiness and solidity. Mistaking a large crystal plane
for water, he started undressing for a swim; sometime later, he fell into a
lake, thinking it was solid glass. In another part of the palace, he tried to
walk through a glass wall and banged his head painfully, and later, pushing
open what he thought was a glass door, fell forward through an open
space. The seeds of anger, sown by such experience and bolstered by ex¬
isting jealousies, ripened into the fatal hostilities that led to the war to end
all wars, as described in the epic.

The power food served that day by the Pandava brothers to the Kau¬
rava guests consisted of an elaborate spread that included fresh fruits
(India’s glorious mangoes, her native jewels, must have shone on the
plate), sesame-studded rice, opulent platters of venison and boar meat.

I H

BANQUETS OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE

and rice pudding mellow with ghee and sweet with honey. But as hu¬
man history has shown so many times, when hospitality is a mere mask
for antipathy, even the most glorious food only fuels the negative energy,
the kind that can lead to war and destruction.

Contemplating the connections between food and power was seductive
up to a point, but finally I needed a break. I felt the need to explore
Delhi as a city of commoners, not royals. Like any capital city, it is a har¬
lequin mixture of natives and foreigners, but it was impossible not to
wonder whether it had overall become an overwhelmingly Punjabi city.
The sight of turbaned Sikh men on the streets, and the voluble ex¬
changes in Punjabi (identifiable to me, if not understandable) I heard in
shops and on street corners, continued to remind me of the enormous,
catastrophic migration of Sikhs and Hindus that had taken place from
Punjab after Partition. To what extent had the moving finger of history
rearranged the items on the ordinary person’s dinner table after such an
event? Had the bold strokes of the Punjabi dhaba obliterated the smaller
identifying nuances that characterized the foods cooked by migrants
from other states? And then there was the perennial question posed by a
megacity—what was the future of domestic cookery in an age of intol¬
erably long commutes, growing numbers of working women, frequent
eating out, and the acceptability of entertaining guests with take-out
fare brought in from neighborhood restaurants? One thing was evident.
Even if the Punjabi influence was homogenizing Delhi’s restaurant in¬
dustry, the food with which it enticed the consumer was neither the ex¬
quisitely simple rice-dal-bread meal I had eaten in Amritsar, nor the
sturdy chapatti-greens-panir-dal-halvah fare of the Punjabi peasant or
laborer. In today’s prosperous Delhi—and oddly, the smell of money is
more blatant here than in a commercial hub like Bombay—the menu of
the Punjabi dhaba boasts a range of breads and kebabs reminiscent of
the rugged Northwest Frontier (an area now in Pakistan), supplemented
by concoctions with a high lipid factor. Meat, fish, and vegetables, all are
lush with oil or ghee. The meat sauces are richly laced with yogurt,
cream, or pounded nuts, all of which have been part of Islamic Indian

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cooking, or tomatoes, which were imported by Europeans and popular¬
ized by the British.

One of the things that particularly struck me was the insistence
with which people kept saying that 1 couldn’t possibly leave Delhi with¬
out tasting the famous “butter chicken.” The mere name sounded in¬
congruous in an Indian city. After all, it is ghee, rather than butter, that
has been the preferred cooking medium from ancient times. Yet, mod¬
ern Delhi swoons over its butter chicken, an apt epitome for a city
where, during the last half century, all the old rules of success have been
rewritten. Butter chicken happens to be the brainchild of Kundan Lai,
an enterprising post-Partition refugee from the Northwest Frontier,
who started a restaurant in Old Delhi called Moti Mahal. The chicken is
first grilled and then cooked in a sauce, but what makes it stand out is
the near-heretical combination of ingredients—yogurt, garlic, and gin¬
ger, a variety of ground spices, tomatoes, and, of course, butter. Once it
became a hit with the public, hundreds of restaurants and roadside joints
started dishing up butter chicken themselves.

I had the opportunity to eat some one evening when I joined my
cousin Benu and his family for his birthday celebrations. The butter
chicken, Benu assured me, had not been made at home, but brought espe¬
cially for me, from an “authentic” Punjabi dhaba. Dutifully, I tasted it. An
undertone of fenugreek lingered beyond all the other spices in the
yogurt-tomato-butter sauce. The overall effect, even for a spice-loving
Indian, was a confusion of the taste buds. Again I found myself remem¬
bering the simplicity of the ginger-scented dal of the Golden Temple.
That was not available, but there was more than ample compensation in
the dish of large prawns that Benu’s wife, Shukla, had cooked in the clas¬
sic Bengali style. Both Benu and Shukla are expatriate Bengalis, raised in
Delhi by immigrant parents. So I was not surprised that at the end of the
meal, several kinds of Bengali sweets were brought to the table. As they
both like to say, the confectioners in Delhi’s Bengali enclave, Chittaranjan
Park, can give the ones in Calcutta a run for their money.

The Bengalis became a significant presence in Delhi when the
British relocated the capital from Calcutta in 1911. The huge army

116

BANQUETS OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE

of clerks and government workers in Calcutta had to shift their
residence—however disgruntled they might have felt about it—to keep
their jobs. Soon enough, they developed a reputation for being obsessed
with food and cooking. The story goes that smoke from the cooking
fires in Bengali homes started coming out at four in the morning and
did not die down till midnight. There is no smoke from cooking fires in
this age of gas, electric, and kerosene stoves, but the Bengalis still retain
their epicurean tendencies. The enormous fish market in Chittaranjan
Park displays a large variety of fish as well as the crustaceans that Ben¬
galis love: freshwater prawn, shrimp, and crab. As for Bengali confec¬
tionaries in Delhi, some of them have been around even longer than the
K. C. Das eatery in Bangalore, and pleased the multiethnic palate well
enough to have become landmarks in the city.

When I found my way to the famed Bengal Sweet House, located in
central Delhi’s Bengali Market area, I was momentarily distracted by the
brisk business going on outside. Rows of bamboo gift baskets were laid
out on the sidewalk, their eager vendor pouncing on anyone who
showed the slightest twitch of interest. I studied the assortment of co¬
mestibles, native and global, that lay at my feet, wrapped in colored plas¬
tic. Each basket contained a couple of plump oranges and apples, two
cans of soft drinks, slim Snickers bars, small bags of nuts and biscuits,
and tiny containers of the after-dinner spice chasers collectively called
mukhwas. But the most prominent item was on top, a finger in the eye
of the beholder—yellow bags of potato chips bearing the logo Lay’s.

After this, it wasn’t much of a surprise to discover that the Bengal
Sweet House was owned by a man from Rajasthan. The original Bengali
proprietor had sold off the business many years ago. I looked around the
enormous interior, at the gaggle of customers eating away. Their plates
contained a bewildering number of items that did not in the least re¬
semble Bengali sweets. The menu advertised South Indian dosas, French
fries, Tibetan momos, Mumbai bhel puri, sugar-free kulfi, aloo chat. But
the Bengali sweets were also on the list. I asked for a serving of rosoma-
lai with some trepidation. Rosomalai consists of disks of sweetened cot¬
tage cheese cooked in a sauce of evaporated milk. Like many Bengali

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desserts, it sounds simple but is hard to make well. Tasting the rosomalai
out of the little plastic bowl, I was delightfully surprised by its spongy
texture and the delicate saffron flavor of the milky sauce. Here, within
four walls, was a microcosm of evolution. Time, demand, and new own¬
ership had changed a regional confectionary into a multiethnic food
court with an essentially Indian character. The place bore no resem¬
blance to the gleaming new food courts elsewhere in Delhi and in other
major cities, where the logos were mostly those of Western fast-food
chains, where “American sweet corn” was a surefire attention getter.

Before leaving for Lucknow, I was fortunate enough to meet Rahul
Verma, a food critic and writer who knows Delhi, old and new, like the
back of his hand. Tall and bespectacled, Rahul has a look of inner focus
that seems to ignore the world outside—an impression totally at odds
with the wealth of minutiae about India’s many food traditions with
which he regales you. When Rahul suggested going to one of the best-
known food locales of Old Delhi, the Paranthewali Gali, I decided it
would be folly to miss the opportunity. The Paranthewali Gali (literally,
the alley of paratha makers) is a tiny stretch of restaurants within
the maze of lanes that form Chandni Chowk, a market dating back
to the Mughal era. An atmosphere of medieval commerce still lingers
in the Chowk. Its narrow lanes were impenetrable to soldiers and horses
alike, thus allowing the area to escape much of the major devastation
visited on the city by rampaging invaders of the past. And the parathas
(fried flat breads of many kinds) sold here have been a magnet for hun¬
gry eaters for half a century or more.

Trekking by road from New to Old Delhi used to be a time-
consuming endurance test, given some of the traffic bottlenecks. But the
spiffy new subway system, built with the help of Russian engineering
expertise, has made things easy for the food pilgrim. Following Rahul, I
hopped on the train at the Press Club station, and before I could finish
admiring the comfortable, roomy seats, the clear-as-a-bell enunciation
of the electronic announcements (what an improvement over the barely
intelligible blaring on the Boston subway system), the muted gleam of
the metal fixtures, it was time to get off. Before going into the Gali,

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BANQUETS OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE

Rahul stopped at a tiny shop—little more than a stall—proudly bearing
the name Natraj Cafe.

“They make the best dahi-vada in Delhi,” he said. “You’ve got to
sample some.”

Dahi-vada, or fried lentil buns immersed in a yogurt sauce, is to In¬
dia what the falafel with tahini is to the Middle East. However, I’ve
never been able to acquire a taste for it. I hesitated to spoil my appetite
when the lure of the Gali’s parathas glimmered on the other side of the
street. But I didn’t want to appear either ungracious or unadventurous,
especially in the eyes of a food enthusiast who had generously taken
time out on a Sunday afternoon to be my guide. So I agreed, and por¬
tions of dahi-vada were dished out on small steel plates. The yogurt
sauce covering the lentil cake received a dash of tamarind syrup before
the plates were handed to us. I took a cautious spoonful, then immedi¬
ately a much bigger one. If one had to eat a dahi-vada, this was the one,
with its perfect balance of sweet and sour and its soft, granular texture.
The owner, who seemed to be on friendly terms with Rahul, grinned at
the surprise on my face. Even the face of the dancing Shiva (Natraj),
painted on the business card the owner thrust at me, seemed amused.

Appetite stimulated, instead of spoiled, I crossed the street with
Rahul and followed him down some tortuous lanes. A spicy-sharp aroma
floating out to my nostrils announced the presence of the Paranthewali
Gali. The restaurant Rahul chose was called The Power of Paratha. En¬
tering, we were greeted by a pictorial demonstration of the power—a
large framed photograph of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru,
his sister and daughter beside him, eating a vegetarian meal with utmost
concentration. A closer look revealed a speck of white, possibly yogurt,
on Nehru’s upper lip. It gave the aristocratic Kashmiri Brahmin a kind of
humanity I had not imagined possible.

The restaurants of the Gali are not designed for aesthetics or am¬
bience. This one had walls tiled with rather dingy white marble. The
straight-backed chairs and benches did not encourage leisurely, lingering
meals. The clientele was a mixture of working-class and middle-class
families, out for their Sunday lunch. Large black lettering on a yellow

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board listed the eighteen different kinds of parathas on offer. The real
action, however, was in the front of the shop, where the cooking was be¬
ing done on a raised platform. Enormous quantities of dough had been
kneaded. The cook tore off lumps from it, rolled them out as parathas,
put in the required stuffing, and deep-fried them. A collection of large
aluminum pans contained several vegetable dishes to be eaten with the
parathas—this was a strictly vegetarian joint. There was also a large
metal tray heaped with hot samosas, catering to transient customers who
walked up from the street or stopped their rickshaws, bought a clutch of
samosas, and left.

Within a few minutes, a waiter arrived and put down large steel
plates on our table. In three sections separated by metal ridges, there
were pickles, green chilies, a serving of dal, and two kinds of vegetables.
The parathas, once you chose the kind of filling you wanted, would be
made right before your eyes—one of the attractions of the Gali. Leaving
Rahul to do the ordering, I looked around the restaurant and noticed
another big sign proclaiming, “Pure ghee used.” No need to worry
about trans fats here, only cholesterol.

Paratha, parantha, or prantha (as the restaurant menu spelled it) has
probably been around in some form or other since antiquity and has
many incarnations. Dough (made either with whole wheat flour or re¬
fined white flour) is usually rolled out in several layers, each brushed
with fat, folded into triangular, square, or round shapes, and fried in a
pan. While we associate the paratha mostly with Punjabi and northern
Indian cooking, some believe that the poli of Maharashtra and Gujarat is
a close cousin. The Mughal rulers and nobility were fond of parathas,
which have been a big part of Muslim cuisine throughout India, going
all the way to Bengal. The famous Dhakai paratha (named after Dhaka,
the capital of modern Bangladesh) is a work of art, multilayered and
flaky, like a dinner-plate-size millefeuille.

The Punjabi Hindu tradition, as evident in the shops of the Paranthe-
wali Gali, has left its own mark on the paratha, using a variety of stuffings
instead of making multiple layers, and then deep-frying the filled bread.
Potatoes, radish, green peas, dal, cauliflower, tomatoes, carrots—parathas

120

BANQUETS OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE

can be stuffed with any of these. Among the more exotic elements for
stuffing that this restaurant offered were mewa (solidified milk), khurchan
(the layers of skin that form on hot milk, skimmed off, pressed together,
and dusted with sugar), cashews, chickpea flour, even sugar. Of the ones
we tried that afternoon, the best was the paratha stuffed with fried pieces
of pappadam. Our waiter, having stumbled on to the fact that I had come
all the way from America, urged me to continue the meal even after I felt
like a stuffed paratha myself

“Go on, eat, let me give you some more of the pumpkin dish or
these asafetida-flavored potatoes, and maybe you can try a paratha with
the mixed vegetable stuffing, which you haven’t tasted yet,” he babbled
excitedly in a mixture of Punjabi and Hindi. “You’ll never have a meal
like this in America. Who will feed you with so much love in that cold,
rich country?”

An unanswerable question.

Two days later, I traveled to Lucknow, a little over five hundred miles
from the nation’s capital and itself the state capital of Uttar Pradesh. Like
Delhi, this city has a long pedigree, stretching back to Hindu antiquity
and later acquiring the patina of Muslim royal culture. The name derives
from that of Lakshman, younger brother of Rama, protagonist of the Ra-
mayana, India’s oldest epic. The story goes that when Rama came back
from a fourteen-year exile to his father’s kingdom of Ayodhya (the ety¬
mological parent of the later names, Avadh and Oudh), he decided to give
this part of his domain to Lakshman as a reward for faithful companion¬
ship in exile. The more recent history of Lucknow documents the city
becoming one of the principal centers of the province of Avadh when
Emperor Akbar divided his realm into twelve provinces, around 1590. But
it was under a dynasty of nawabs (viceroys appointed by the Mughal em¬
peror), starting in 1722 with Burhan-ul-Mulk and lasting for more than
a century, that Lucknow became the epitome of courtly refinement in ar¬
chitecture, art, crafts, etiquette, and food. In 1775, Lucknow became
the capital of Avadh. The nawabs belonged to the Shia sect of Islam and
the city remains an important center for Shiites.

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At first sight, Lucknow, rising on the bank of the Gomti River,
seemed to lack the bustling activity of many capital cities. As I traveled
from the airport, I had the sense of a measured lifestyle that evoked the
gentle courtliness of its royal past. In medieval times, Avadh was a fer¬
tile province that supplied much of imperial Delhi’s food—notably
during a famine in the middle of the fourteenth century. Now things
are reversed. While parts of Lucknow are very green with large parks
and tree-lined boulevards (many laid out by the British), the area does
not grow much by way of fruits and vegetables, most of which are im¬
ported from Delhi. The one notable exception is the mango. The state
of Uttar Pradesh produces some of the most memorable mangoes of
India, fruits that carry names like Dusseri (from the village of Deshe-
hari near Lucknow), Chausa, and Langra. In the spring, the mango trees
lining the streets bloom with tiny, greenish-white flowers and infuse
the breezes with a sweet intoxication. Even outsiders critical of India
(the first Mughal emperor Babur was one) could not resist the spell of
the mango. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British,
even as they cursed the hot, humid weather, the relentless monsoon
rains, and the many tropical diseases that afflicted them, would gener¬
ally concede that eating mangoes was a fair compensation for these tra¬
vails. The nawabs of Lucknow devoted considerable resources to the
development of huge mango orchards and the cross-breeding of differ¬
ent varieties.

It was in the older areas of town, not in the green, open areas or
modern residential districts that I had to seek the remnants of the
nawabs’ banquet. Here, one can easily get lost in a maze of lanes and
bazaars, crowded with people, shops, animals, vehicles, and houses. A
ghostly glamour lingers in the air, for these were the neighborhoods in¬
habited in nawabi days by Lucknow’s legendary courtesans who, like the
geishas of Japan, entertained clients noble and common with singing,
dancing, and even poetry recitals. One of the classics of Urdu literature,
a nineteenth-century novel titled Umrao Jan by a Lucknow writer
named Mirza Ruswa (made into a Bollywood hit in the seventies, star¬
ring the legendary film star Rekha) depicts the life of a courtesan named

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Umrao Jan, who could not avoid heartbreak despite her charisma and
her gifts.

Many of the city's historical landmarks—the Bara Imambara, the
Gol Gambaz, the Macchi Bhaban (destroyed by the British, but its re¬
maining walls still decorated with an elegant fish motif), the Rumi
Darwaza, and others—are the architectural gifts of the hundred-odd
years of nawabi rule. Despite the common Muslim elements of domes
and minarets, they do not resemble the Mughal monuments in Delhi. A
less severe, more fanciful imagination seems to have been at work be¬
hind these structures. And the cuisine of the nawabs’ court, likewise,
though it had many similarities with that of Delhi, had a distinctive
touch that is still apparent. Part of the reason for this innovation may
have been the sheer extent of self-indulgence that marked the lives of
the nawabs. One had his food prepared in and served from six different
kitchens. Aside from homegrown talent, renowned chefs from Delhi
were hired at astronomical salaries and encouraged to give full rein to
their fancy. For the royal family, as well as the elite, innovation was
prized as much as the actual taste of the food. Playful deception was of¬
ten the hallmark of a great rakabdar (chef), many of whom were capa¬
ble of temperamental excesses on a par with those of the archetypical
French chef.

Nawabs and noblemen encouraged their chefs to compete with each
other in the art of culinary masquerades. The last nawab of Lucknow,
Wajid Ali Shah, once invited a prince who had recently moved from
Delhi to Lucknow. When a fruit conserve was served, the guest discov¬
ered, much to his consternation, that it was sweetened meat made to
look like preserved fruit. Some time later, the prince invited the nawab
and presented him with a lavish spread of many kinds of rice, bread,
meats, and pickles. Upon tasting these, however, the nawab found that
everything was made of sugar. Another chef is credited with fashioning
small birds out of meat and using it in a pilaf without damaging the bird
shapes. When the pilaf was served, it looked like a platter of rice on
which birds were pecking. Perhaps the best instance of this kind of de¬
ception was the dessert served by a legendary chef, Pir Ali, who worked

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in two centers of imperial cuisine—Lucknow and Hyderabad. He
served what appeared to be a whole pomegranate. On inspection, it was
revealed that the seeds were made of jellied pear juice with almond ker¬
nels inside, while the thick outer rind, as well as the delicate membranes
between the seeds, was made of sugar.

I was, however, most intrigued by the descriptions 1 had read of
shirmal, a bread that Lucknow claims as its unique product. And the
place to get the best shirmal, according to those who know, is Luc¬
know’s legendary downtown eatery, Tunday Kababi. As 1 made my way
there one evening, I did a mental inventory of northern Indian breads I
had tasted. The baked, stuffed kulchas in the Amritsar dhabas and the
thick, substantial chapattis at the Golden Temple; the garlic butter—lashed
naan bread served with kebabs at Delhi’s Bukhara restaurant, whose
Afghan-style food was such a hit with President Bill Clinton that the
restaurant now has a special menu called “The Presidential Platter”; the
thin wheat phulkas or chapattis, puffed up with air, that 1 ate at my
friend Gayatri Acharya’s house; the deep-fried stuffed parathas of the
Paranthewali Gali; the delicate, paper-thin, folded romali roti (handker¬
chief bread) at Karim’s—each had its unique appeal but, by every ac¬
count, the shirmal of Lucknow would surpass them all in delicacy and
malleability. The dough for shirmal is made without any water. Only
ghee and milk are used. The result is a melting-in-the-mouth softness
that lingers like a caress even after the shirmal has been eaten. In the old
days, a nawab’s kitchen had many grades of ghee for cooking different
dishes, the most prized being metha ghee, which had a sweet taste be¬
cause of a special processing technique.

Tunday Kababi’s shirmal, flavored with saffron, certainly lives up
to its reputation, as do the kebabs and rich dishes like Shahi Chicken
Masala. The restaurant faces a bazaar, and the cooking is done in the
open air (though not during the monsoon). Customers order their food,
then go inside and get their tables. Here, as in the Paranthewali Gali, one
should not look for decor or ambience. The tables are set close to one
another, and the decibel level of adult conversation and crying children
can be distracting. But only till the food arrives. The restaurant serves

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many specialties of the courtly cuisine of Avadh/Lucknow, Two meat
items that melt in the mouth as readily as shirmal are Gelavat and Kakori
kebabs. Both exude a complex, entrancing fragrance of spices and kewra
(screw pine blossom) water; both are entwined with stories, though the
connection may be mythical. A Gelavat kebab, which is a flat, medium¬
sized patty of lamb, is the softer of the two, and the story goes that a
chef created it to please a nawab who had lost all his teeth, but not his
appetite for richly cooked meat. For a Kakori kebab, the meat is ground,
mixed with spices, and wrapped around a skewer before being gently
roasted on a flame. What makes it different from any other seekh
(skewer) kebab is its supposed commemoration of the Kakori Train
Robbery of August 9, 1925, during which Indian freedom fighters
looted British treasury funds from a train going from Shahjahanpur to
Lucknow They were eventually caught, and four of them were later ex¬
ecuted. But the kebab lives on, its texture softened with the extract of
green papaya, its aroma enriched with expensive spices and the heady
scent of liberation.

Over the past couple of decades, there has been a conscious effort
on the part of many hotels and restaurants in India to revive the differ¬
ent branches of fine cuisine and popularize them. The cuisine of Avadh
is, naturally, one of the prime targets of this effort. It easily transcends
the barrier of regional preferences because of its mild taste and tempt¬
ing richness. One of the characteristics of this style of cooking is the
very fine pureeing of the ingredients for sauces and gravies. Sometimes,
items like onions are first roasted or fried before being pureed and then
strained, the objective being the smoothest possible gravy. As in all Mus¬
lim cookery, ghee and pounded nuts, such as cashews, are lavishly used.
Kewra (screw pine) water and saffron are two other important elements,
making the food more aromatic than that of Delhi’s Muslim cook¬
ing. Among the more unusual creations surviving from the nawabs’
kitchens are Tingri Dolma, mushrooms stuffed with minced meat; Se-
vian ka Muzaffar, which is made of fine strands of noodles; and Lasoon
ki Kheer, a rich, custardy concoction made with garlic and evaporated
milk, in which the garlic totally loses its identity. One example of a

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common, even throwaway item being transformed into something rich
and strange is the dessert called Shahi Tukra (a royal tidbit). Again, there
is an anecdote behind the dish. One of the nawabs, in his charitable
moments, used to throw pieces of stale bread to the poor during his
progress through the city. One day, a creative cook decided to gather
some pieces, deep-fry them in ghee, steep them in syrup, and serve them
with a garnish of thick evaporated milk—creating a new dessert.

I learned these mouthwatering details from Nagendra Singh, a chef
at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Lucknow. As marvelous as these dishes
sounded, I still wondered if the nawabs did not occasionally hanker for
a taste of fish and vegetables. He assured me they did. Several kinds of
freshwater fish were very popular and still are. The passion for kebabs
extended to the famous hariyali kebab, made with lentils and spinach.
Even the humble dais were made into rich specialties like Shahi Dal, in
which each grain of urad dal remained separate even after being thor¬
oughly cooked, or Dal Sultani, in which the larger grains of arhar or
toor dal (pigeon peas) were flavored with garlic, cream, and lemon.

Lucknow also has a surprising variety of sweets that can either be
served as dessert, as an occasional snack, or even a late-morning amuse-
bouche, stirring the gastric juices for lunch. Most of them are made ei¬
ther with solidified evaporated milk or lentils ground to a paste and ghee.
The confectioners in Lucknow also make a few items out of chhana (cot¬
tage cheese), which they have probably learned to make from the Ben¬
galis, but their sweets have variations in texture that are not to be found in
Bengal. A legendary sweetshop, Ramasrey, which has been doing business
since 1805, presents a range of sweets that illustrate the relationship be¬
tween culinary trends and social conditions. The dry sweets, such as
pedas, were prized by the soldiers and ordinary citizens of the Mughal
Empire because of their durability in times of war. The courtly tradition,
originating in the Islamic world that included Persian, Turkish, and Ara¬
bian kingdoms, is reflected in the lavish, halvahlike sweets that require
profuse quantities of ghee and nuts. Lucknow’s own delicate refinement
is seen in items like malai paan, made with pressed layers of cream filled
with sweet nuts and spices, and rolled like a betel leaf

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BANQUETS OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE

However, the signature dishes of Avadh’s royal cuisine were indis¬
putably the varied pilafs and biryanis that the nawabs inherited from the
Mughal court and enhanced with their own extravagant touch. Aside
from nuts, raisins, and many kinds of dried fruits, these rice dishes were
also decorated with edible gold and silver foil. The names of different
pilafs indicate the artistry that went into their preparation—the pearl,
the garden, the cuckoo, the jasmine, and the light. I read about the tech¬
nique for making pearl pilaf—simple to the point of greatness—in a
collection of essays by a veteran Lucknow journalist, Abdul Halim
Sharar, written in the early part of the twentieth century. Carefully
measured amounts of gold and silver foil were beaten with an egg yolk
and stuffed into the gullet of a chicken already cleaned and ready for
cooking. After being kept in the oven for a while, the chicken was taken
out and sliced open. The yolk and the foil had by then formed perfect,
radiant globules—no less beautiful than natural pearls. These were
added to the pilaf before serving. Sadly, I could not find anyone who
could duplicate this creation.

Chewing paan at the end of a meal, to aid digestion and freshen
one’s breath, is a common habit in all parts of India even today, and the
courtly culture of Lucknow endowed it with a special aesthetic. In some
specialty shops, I discovered that one cone of betel leaf stuffed with spe¬
cial ingredients can cost as much as two hundred rupees. In the nawabs’
time, the elite and members of the royal family also frequently chewed
cardamom pods throughout the day, as a mark of sophistication. The
Mughal court in Delhi already had the custom of offering guests a few
seeds of cardamom as a mark of welcome and favor. The courtiers of
Lucknow went one better in their obsession with this magic pod: They
chewed cardamom seeds that had been taken out of the pod, covered in
gold and silver foil, and dipped in tobacco-laced rose water—a simulta¬
neous gratification of taste and addiction. Like the jeweled snuff boxes
of Regency England or the sumptuously decorated Faberge eggs made
for a Russian czar, exquisite miniature caskets of gold and silver were
made by the court jewelers of Lucknow so that the nobility could easily
carry around a supply of cardamom seeds, with or without nicotine.

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The practice of chewing gold- and silver-coated cardamom seeds
survived well beyond the age and milieu of nawabs and princes, as I can
testify. Growing up in a household of adults who loved chewing paan
with its many accompaniments (including zarda [scented tobacco]), I of¬
ten went with my mother to a specialty shop that provided tobacco,
areca nuts, and cardamom seeds processed in a variety of ways. This was
a jaunt I enjoyed, unlike the excursions to the fish market, for I knew
that, at the end, I could expect a treat. Patiently, I watched the shopkeep¬
er mix shredded tobacco in a brass bowl. Even as a child, I realized this
was an art. Tiny amounts of mysterious liquids from a series of bottles
were shaken into the tobacco bowl and, after each addition, the tobacco
was vigorously stirred with his fingers. Strange perfumes filled the air
around us, almost to the point of knocking me over. But I held on to
a brass rod that ran in front of the counter, inhaling more and more
deeply, enjoying an unreal sensation, determined not to pass out. Finally,
the tobacco mixed to his satisfaction, the man poured it into shiny alu¬
minum boxes, their lids engraved with the name of his shop. Once this
important business was concluded and my mother had paid, he would
give me a conspiratorial smile. In response, I would stretch out my palm
into which he poured a large thimbleful of perfumed, silver-coated
seeds of the large black cardamom. All the way home, I chewed on the
seeds, a few at a time, enjoying their texture, fragrance, sweetness, and
the sharpness imparted by a dash of peppermint oil. That shop has now
vanished, as, I fear, has the art of mixing tobacco to satisfy individual
preferences. Indians wanting perfumed tobacco in their paan now have
to buy it prepackaged from big companies.

I might as well confess here that of all the Islamic courtly destinations
in India, Tve always had a particular fascination for Lucknow, because of
the sad connection between the last nawab, Wajid Ali Shah, and my home¬
town, Calcutta. It is a historical denouement in which native authority
was brazenly overwritten by a foreign commercial entity that had no
mandate whatsoever, democratic or royal. It is also an outcome that al¬
lowed the residents of Calcutta, hundreds of miles from Lucknow, the op¬
portunity for a close-up look at the cuisine and culture of the nawabs.

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During the heyday of the nawabs, the British East India Company
had already established a stronghold in the province of Avadh, doing
brisk business in sugar, indigo, and calico. Far away to the east, the
British had defeated the last nawab of Bengal, Seraj-ud-Daulah, at the
Battle of Plassey in 1757. Over time, they also began to flex their politi¬
cal muscles in Avadh, trying to acquire influence, power, and territory. A
series of political maneuvers and the 1764 victory in the Battle of Buxar
(where military forces of both Bengal and Avadh united against the
British), allowed the British to negotiate extraordinarily exploitative
terms with the nawab of Avadh. However, not content even with such
extreme accommodation, the British governor general in India, Lord
Dalhousie, formally annexed the province of Avadh (or Oudh, as they
called it) in 1856, the supposed grounds being mismanagement of the
state’s governance, the real objective being total control of the state’s
considerable resources. With hindsight, the annexation of Avadh seems
as significant an indicator of the colonization of India as Hitler’s An¬
schluss was of Nazi domination. Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was exiled to
Calcutta, lest he rally his people around him and make trouble for the
British. Although self-indulgent and effete to a fault, the nawab was also
a gifted poet and musician; one of his songs, “Jab chhor chali Lucknow
nagari” (“When I left the town of Lucknow”), is a piercing lament over
his fate.

The nawab’s entourage included not only his wives, mistresses,
dancing girls, and courtiers, but also many of the royal chefs. In Cal¬
cutta, where the courtly lifestyle was limited by comparatively meager
finances, the chefs had to use their ingenuity to feed the nawab the way
he was used to. In a curious historical irony, the British predilection for
“meat and potatoes” came to figure on the nawab’s plate as well, but
purely out of frugality. The potato, a foreign tuber that was slowly gain¬
ing acceptance in Indian kitchens, was liberally added as filler to birya-
nis and gravy-based meat dishes to reduce the expense of meat. It is a
tradition that still prevails in Calcutta, when Avadh-style biryanis are
prepared.

Neither Wajid Ali Shah nor the British could foretell the outcome of this

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ruthless expulsion. Within a year, the sepoys, or native Indian soldiers in
the British army, rose up in rebellion. The legend behind this uprising—
originally labeled the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, later amended to the First War
of Independence—was that both Hindu and Muslim soldiers were furious at
discovering that the cartridges of their new Enfield rifles, which they had to
tear open with their teeth, were greased with fat from pigs and cows. Since
pigs were forbidden to Muslims and the cow was sacred to Hindus, the two
communities were equally outraged and rose up together in mutiny against
an insensitive foreign power. Of course, the greased cartridges were not the
sole cause of a large-scale rebellion; the soldiers had already begun to fear that
the British would destroy their religion and culture, and the ruthless annexa¬
tion of provinces like Avadh and the deposition of the traditional ruler added
to their disquiet. In any case, the uprising was surprisingly well orchestrated
across the cities of northern India, and here, too, there is a food-based legend.
Wheat-flour chapattis with messages concealed inside were supposedly dis¬
tributed hand to hand to coordinate the time and place of action.

The besieged British Residency in Lucknow saw some of the blood¬
iest action of the uprising between June and November of 1857. The
property has been preserved as a ruin, in memory of those who lost their
lives, its walls scarred with cannon shot, its slender bricks scattered here
and there, its grassy graveyard eloquent with mute headstones. Walking
around the grounds, I came face-to-face with a large placard saying “Ban-
quetting [sic] Hall,” planted in front of a large building. Inside, the re¬
mains of the fireplace are still extant, and through the gaping holes that
once were windows, you can hear pigeons cooing loudly. I wandered into
a small room leading off from the main hall and came upon a pair of very
young lovers kissing each other. Seeing me, they sprang apart in embar¬
rassment. Equally embarrassed, I retreated hastily, but not before I had
seen the half-eaten chocolate bar in the boy’s hand. Had he been feeding
her chocolate and then taking his share from her mouth? It was at least an
image that obliterated some of the sadness of the place.

There is nothing like Lucknow’s elegiac mood about Hyderabad, the
capital of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, a part of the Indian

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South where several Muslim kingdoms flourished over a period of five
centuries, first under the Bahamani sultans, then under the Qutb Shahi
dynasty, and later under the nizams. Hyderabad not only has a rich past,
it is also an up-and-coming city, brashly vying with Bangalore as a tech¬
nology hub. Medieval monuments and palaces coexist happily with the
gleaming glass and concrete structures of what is billed as “cyberabad.”

Carved out of the rocky Deccan plateau, the massive Golconda Fort
on the outskirts of modern Hyderabad is a testament to the grandeur of
the past. Originally attributed to a Hindu king, the fort is permanently
associated with a Muslim dynasty of Turkmans from Persia called the
Qutb Shahis, who made it into a luxurious palace invested with all
the comforts that contemporary art and technology could provide. The
name comes from two local words: golla, meaning “shepherd,” and
konda, meaning “hill,” and seems to fortuitously foreshadow the growth
of a cuisine which centers on meat, meat, and more meat, most of it
lamb. The seven rulers of the Qutb Shahi dynasty ruled the area for
nearly 170 years, from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries. As the
Shiite nawabs of Avadh had done in the north, the nizams of Hyderabad
oversaw the development of a unique Muslim culture in the south, on
which their adherence to Sufism left its imprint. Golconda Fort is a re¬
minder not only of a medieval past, but also of the stony obduracy with
which the old city defied the huge army of the Mughal emperor Au-
rangzeb who marched here from Delhi and laid siege to the fort, deter¬
mined to conquer the Deccan. It took the Mughals eight months of
waiting, during which time they were almost on the verge of starvation,
before Golconda fell in 1687. What neither the besieged occupants of
the fort nor the victorious Mughals could know was that the enforced
period of siege was the gestation time for the birth of Hyderabad’s
unique cuisine as we know it today, a cuisine that is distinct from that of
the rest of Andhra Pradesh. For, out of desperation, the Mughal army
cooks foraged in the land around the castle and learned to use the local
herbs and vegetables in the meals they cooked for the soldiers.

Like all conquerors from Alexander the Great onward, Aurangzeb
eventually had to go back to his home base, leaving behind a deputy to

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administer the Deccan. In 1724, the administrator declared the region to
be independent of the Mughal Empire. There was no protest, since Au-
rangzeb had died in 1707 and his successor had no stomach for another
long march to this southern realm. Under the title of Nizam-ul-Mulk, a
powerful minister at court, Asif Jan, installed himself as the ruler of the
province. His descendants proceeded to govern a prosperous region for
nearly 224 years. One of the secrets of their long survival (there was a
nizam as recently as 1948, when India had already become an indepen¬
dent democratic nation) was to work out a cleverly amicable arrange¬
ment with the British, who stationed a Resident at the nizam’s court, as
they had in Lucknow. The nizams also successfully played off the British
against the French, who were trying to get a foothold in southern India.

It was in the kitchen of the nizam’s palace that Lucknow’s famous
chef Pir Ali performed some of his miracles. On one occasion, he de¬
lighted the nizam’s distinguished English guests by presenting a gigantic
pie that contained tiny, live birds, which flew away when the piecrust
was cut open. Reading the story, I wondered whether Pir Ali’s opus
could have had some strange, convoluted connection with the English
nursery rhyme, “Sing a song of sixpence, pocket full of rye/Four and
twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.”

While the elite cookery of Delhi and Lucknow still demonstrates its
Persian-Afghan-Central Asian roots, not merely in the techniques of
preparing pilaf or meat, but also in the selection of ingredients, Hyder¬
abad’s Muslim cuisine has a strongly Southern identity. Aside from the
famed pilafs and meat dishes, the cooking of vegetables also demon¬
strates notable flare and ingenuity. The flavors of mustard seeds, kari and
ghungura leaves, hot chilies, peanuts, tamarind, and coconut milk merge
into a flavorful entity that is found nowhere else.

However, as any Hyderabad resident will tell you, this is a cuisine in
which meat rules. The city is like an island where, despite the significant
presence of vegetarians all around, the residents cannot imagine a meal
without meat. This goes for both Hindus and Muslims. Even breakfast,
which for nonvegetarian Indians elsewhere generally means eggs, becomes
here a meal of tiny samosas filled with meat, or bread with nehari, a rich

132

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soup made out of lamb trotters. For weddings or other celebrations,
even the poorest person will somehow scrape together money to buy
basmati rice, ghee, meat, and spices to make biryani for the guests. So in¬
grained is the notion of biryani being the food of festivity that Hyder¬
abad’s Hindus will even eat biryani to celebrate the great annual festival
of Diwali, which, in other parts of the country, is usually the occasion
for a vegetarian feast. Another sturdy meat concoction, which came to
India from the Middle East and was enjoyed by both the sultans and the
Mughal emperors, became a renowned delicacy in the hands of Hyder¬
abad’s chefs, Haleem (if it is made with lamb) or harees (if made with
chicken) is a substantial pottage that combines meat with five kinds of
dal and cracked grains of wheat, all of which are cooked in milk and
then pounded to a pulp with wooden mallets. Afterward, the mash is
cooked in ghee with fried onions, chili peppers, coriander, and cream.
The entire process can take quite a few hours. In medieval times, this
was a convenient one-dish nourishment for soldiers in the Mughal
army. In modern Hyderabad, the aroma of the dish suffuses the air
mostly during the abstemious days of Ramadan. After the day’s arduous
fast, it becomes a nourishing and tasteful evening meal.

I arrived in Hyderabad with one overriding mental assignment—to
taste the biryani and find how distinctively different it was from its
counterpart in northern India, I remembered Rahul Verma in Delhi
telling me that he much preferred the Hyderabad biryani over Avadh’s
dish. But in Calcutta during my childhood, there was much greater mys¬
tique attached to the biryanis and pilafs of Avadh, especially because of
their exquisite aromatic signature. The nizams of Hyderabad were bet¬
ter known to us for their fabulous wealth than for their inventive
kitchens.

One of the important differences in the two biryanis is that, in Hy¬
derabad, the meat is not precooked when it is added to the rice—an ap¬
parent conundrum, since meat takes far longer to cook than rice. Even
more surprising, no water is added to the pot. The juices released by the
meat are supposed to provide just the right amount of moisture. And as
I discovered for myself, both are cooked to perfection. The secret lies in

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the selection of only the most delicate portions of young animals, in the
ingredients used to marinate and tenderize the meat, in the length of
marinating time, and, finally, in the sealing of the pot in which the
biryani is cooked. Surprisingly, the cooking doesn’t take more than half
an hour, at most. Even more surprising, the biryani is often served with
a thin stew in which long, fat, green chilies have been simmered in a
tangy broth. The ingredients of the broth include copra (dried coconut),
sesame, whole coriander, whole cumin, and peanuts, which are all roasted
and ground together before going into the broth with tamarind and
brown sugar. This mirch ka salan is poured over the biryani, and the two
are eaten together. Although the chilies look fearsome, they are quite
mild, like Italian peppers. Salan is the generic name for a stew; when you
get tired of the large peppers, other vegetables can be used to make the
salan accompanying the biryani.

The spicier register of the biryani, the thinness of the pieces of
meat, and the addition of the salan—all added up to a novel eating ex¬
perience, but did not dislodge the Avadh biryani from its superior posi¬
tion in my mind. Could this be rooted in some peculiar fascination for
the hapless nawab Wajid Ali Shah, living out his days as an exile in my
city, eventually dying in London? I think not. The best-known portrait
of the nawab shows a grossly overweight person, done up in the jewels
and regalia of the day, his upper lip overshadowed by a thick, well-
curled mustache, his hair drooping to his shoulders like grape clusters,
one nipple bared through the loop of his dress, as decreed by fashion.
Not the kind of figure to arouse romantic visions in my head; only a
rather pathetic symbol of India’s failure to resist the voracious appetite
of the British.

Biryani aside, however, Hyderabad has a whole slew of delightful
dishes that any region could be proud of Take pathar ka gosht: Scallops
of lamb, cut very thin, are marinated for eight to ten hours with the
juice of green papaya, garam masala, and crushed green chilies. They are
then grilled on the pathar (stone), a two-inch-thick slab of granite that
is heated over a blazing charcoal fire. My friend Shermeen Ahmed, who
grew up in Hyderabad before moving to Dubai with her husband, once

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told me that these stones are heirloom pieces, passed on from mother to
daughter. They are never washed, only rubbed clean after each use. An¬
other special Hyderabad concoction, chigur ka gosht, was one of her
childhood favorites. It is a springtime dish, when the tamarind is in
bloom, and the tiny flowers are harvested and cooked with boneless
mutton, adding both fragrance and flavor. The renowned dum ka murgh
is an example of a courtly dish enlivened with local touches. Almonds,
cashews, and chironji (lentil-shaped, mildly almond-flavored nuts) are
ground up with dried coconut, green chilies, and fried onions to form
the basis of the gravy in which a chicken is cooked.

Along with their rapturous descriptions of meat dishes, however, a
number of people reminded me that the cuisine is not really one¬
dimensional. Legumes and vegetables do have a role and are transformed
by using typically Southern ingredients. Dalcha is one example. As Ra-
jarshi Guriya, the executive chef at the Fortune Katriya Hotel, told me
succinctly: “Dalcha is Hyderabad.” Two kinds of dal, toor and chana
(chickpeas), are cooked, pureed fine, and tempered with ghee, mustard
seeds, and kari leaves. Tamarind pulp and brown sugar are added for a
sweet-and-sour taste. The versatility of dalcha is demonstrated by its
different incarnations. Different types of vegetables, or even meat, can
be added to dalcha for seasonal flavors or richness of taste.

No cuisine in post-medieval India could have developed ignoring
potatoes and Hyderabad is no exception. William Dalrymple’s White
Mughals is a magnificent reconstruction of life in eighteenth-century
Hyderabad, with all its political intrigues and maneuvers of colonial
and imperial power. He quotes from a letter written to a friend in Cal¬
cutta by James Kirkpatrick, the British Resident at the court of the
nizam. Hankering for the vegetables to which his Western palate is
accustomed—peas, French beans, lettuce, endive, celery, cabbage and
cauliflower—Kirkpatrick laments that the only thing available in Hy¬
derabad is the eggplant. What he really longs for is “a good supply of
potatoes, being a vegetable I like much but have not tasted these two
years and more.”

Two centuries later, the popularity and ubiquity of potatoes in the

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Indian meal demonstrates the conquering power of this magic tuber.
The cooks of Hyderabad can be credited with using it to make a dish
called veppudu, to which even a Bengali like me might be willing to
concede equal status with the dam and chachhari and bharta we make
with potatoes. It is a dry and spicy dish in which baby potatoes are
peeled, boiled, and then fried with onions, ginger, and roasted and
ground spices such as turmeric and coriander. The oil in which the po¬
tatoes are fried is first tempered with whole red chilies, mustard seeds,
and tiny portions of yellow split peas and urad dal. A final garnish of
chopped kari leaves and mint leaves adds freshness and fragrance.

As for the humble eggplant so derided by James Kirkpatrick, in Hy¬
derabad the vegetable has as mystical a status as in Turkish or Middle
Eastern cuisine. It is impossible to overstate its significance in India’s
food, given its long availability as an indigenous vegetable. Every re¬
gional cuisine in India has developed its own array of eggplant recipes,
but in terms of richness and delicacy of preparation, Hyderabad is the
winner every time. Baghare baingan is almost as famous as Hyderabad’s
biryani, and has titillated the palates of both nizams and commoners. It
is not just Indian bias that makes me say that it outdoes the Turkish imam
bayaldi (literally, the imam fainted—a stuffed eggplant dish) in its poten¬
tial to make the consumer faint with pleasure.

One sunny morning, I decided to drive out of the city to Golconda
Fort, wanting to savor the atmosphere of a hardier, simpler era when
biryanis and luscious meats might not yet have fully developed their op¬
ulent potential. As the streets narrowed and the density of population
and transportation decreased, I noticed a small Hindu temple standing
right next to a butcher’s shop filled with caged chickens and hanging
animal carcasses. I was amazed. The South has a reputation for being
dominated by Brahminical Hinduism, which advocates strict vegetari¬
anism; its temples are barred to Muslims. Yet, in this undistinguished
neighborhood, I saw a series of worshippers entering the temple and
performing their rituals absolutely unfazed either by the contiguity of
the shop or the Muslim name on the signboard. I doubted that I would

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see such close coexistence even in my state of West Bengal, which has a
reputation for communal tolerance. I thought about the terrible reli¬
gious rioting that had recently torn apart the state of Gujarat, where the
nonviolent religions of Buddhism and Jainism had once flourished. I re¬
membered the even worse trauma of the 1992 riots in Uttar Pradesh,
when a mosque had been destroyed by Hindu religious fundamentalists
on the grounds that a Muslim emperor had built the mosque after de¬
stroying a temple honoring Rama. Would it be possible to construct a
different history if we learned to tolerate or even simply ignore each
other’s food?

Inside Golconda Fort, there is an echo that sounds from the en¬
trance all the way up to the royal chambers at the top, as tour guides will
tell you. The diamond-shaped niches in the dome of the front portico
trap sound and transmit it upward—a clever way for a ruler to know
who was coming near him. Hearing all the visitors happily clapping
away and pausing to listen to the echo filled me with a sudden sharp
awareness of the continuity of Indian history. However, by the time I
had climbed all the way to the top of the fort and made my way down,
my feet sore from stumbling over broken, unstable rocks and uneven
grassy surfaces, my face burning in the heat, my eyes dazzled by the
southern sun to the point of hallucinating, I was ready to walk out on
history and seek more edible experiences.

Small things are big indicators of cultural predilections. And two
shops in Hyderabad provided me with an example. This is a city with an
inordinate passion for baked goods, probably even more than the centers
of European dominion like Goa or Calcutta. In shops like Karachi Bak¬
ery or Sarvi Bakery and Cafe, large batches of cookies, cakes, and
“puffs” (flaky pastry stuffed with chicken, meat, or vegetables) vanish
from the glass cabinets at record speed. Bakeries flourish here with the
same assurance as sweetshops in Calcutta. According to Pradeep Khosla,
executive chef at the Taj Krishna Hotel in Hyderabad, hard-baked
crackers, cookies, and meat-filled pastries called tutaqs were part of
Mughal army rations. During the eight-month siege of Golconda Fort,
when the Mughal army had to camp out for eight months, a two-way

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exchange of food and culinary habits began to flourish. The locals
acquired a taste for these baked flour products and, in the absence of
familiar ingredients, the emperor’s officers, commanders, and soldiers
learned to recast their Delhi-style cooking with the spices, herbs, vegeta¬
bles, and grains that grew on the rocky plateau of the Deccan. Over
time, under the patronage of the nizams, gifted chefs came up with spe¬
cialties that have now joined the endangered species list. I remembered
Shermeen Ahmed’s rapturous descriptions of the courtly descendants of
the soldiers’ biscuit. One, called badam ki jali, is made with marzipan
shaped in floral molds; two flowers are put together with a layer of edi¬
ble silver foil in between, and baked. Another, called ashrafi, is made of
marzipan mixed with ground saffron, and is a sweet replica of the old
coin of the nizam regime. As with so many delicacies, only a handful of
families still know how to make these items, and they are likely to take
their secrets to the grave.

At eleven thirty in the morning, Sarvi Bakery was already full of
young people eagerly buying up their chosen goodies, some taking them
away in boxes, others standing in the shop and devouring them with
gusto. Most of them seemed to be college students or young profession¬
als, very probably working in the call centers and software companies
that are rapidly multiplying in Indian cities. I watched them with envy.
The capacity to demolish large quantities of rich, filled pastries and still
be able to eat lunch is a gift that only comes with youth.

My young friend Ananya, who had accompanied me on this bakery
jaunt, belonged to the category of software migrants. She and her hus¬
band had grown up in Calcutta and gone to the States for higher edu¬
cation. Ananya’s husband had started his own dot.com, sold it at a
substantial profit, and then joined the buyer corporation, which had sent
him to India to start their Hyderabad operation. They lived in a pleasant
gated compound in the suburb called Banjara Hills, and their two chil¬
dren were growing up learning to eat rava (semolina) dosa, or paserattu
(a thin pancake made with green moong dal paste) instead of toast, eggs,
and cereal for breakfast. The daughter, who was old enough to go to the
International School, had lost her American accent and inflected English

138

BANQUETS OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE

words in the Telugu (the language of Andhra Pradesh) way. Even as
Ananya and her husband enjoyed their life in Hyderabad, they knew that
in a few years they might have to retrace their steps back to the United
States. It was a pattern of repeated migration that their parents could
never have dreamed of.

After sharing one of the chicken puffs—deliciously flaky and
spicy—Ananya and I decided to find a tea shop serving Irani chai, an¬
other Hyderabad addiction. But though it was called Irani, it did not
taste any different from the cardamom-scented milky tea sold in north¬
ern Indian tea shops. At our next eating stop, Ananya insisted I have a
taste of another typical Hyderabad dish, though it has nothing to do
with Muslim royalty. Chicken 65, as it is called, is an upstart concoction,
consisting of pieces marinated in yogurt, and cooked with fresh kari
leaves and other spices. Mythmaking about food has not died out in the
modern age, and there are two versions of how Chicken 65 came by its
name. The more obvious one is that the chef who invented it used
sixty-five different spices in the marinade. The other, which tickles my
fancy more, is that the chicken used for this dish always has to be sixty-
five days old.

For dessert that afternoon, it had to be yet another oddity. Hyder¬
abad, I learned, is famous for its ice-cream shops in the old town, near
the landmark that symbolizes the city—the Char Minar, an elegant
monument built by Mohammed Quli Qutb Shah in 1591. The slim
minarets soar up to 180 feet and provide a breathtaking view of the city
spread below. We made our way past the Char Minar into the old mar¬
ket area, where bangle shops displayed shelves filled with exquisite mir-
rorwork bangles, glinting under a blaze of neon. Women in colorful
burqas held out their bared wrists, and the male shop assistants squeezed
their hands and slipped on the bangles one by one by one—a peculiar
circumvention of the conservative Islamic taboos against touching be¬
tween the sexes. The bargaining in Telugu was, however, vociferous and
utterly unromantic. Making one’s way through this absorbed, unyielding
crowd was hot work and the prospect of ice cream or kulfi enticing.

Modern ice cream is an appropriate corollary of the medieval food

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139

tradition that gave India the kulfi, which was either brought in by the
Mughals from their previous habitations in Kabul and Samarkand, or
developed by them in response to the torrid heat of the upper Gangetic
plain. Whatever the origin, the kulfi has remained remarkably un¬
changed through the centuries. It is named after the conical metal vessel
in which a portion of khoa—obtained by boiling milk down to a solid
form—is frozen. In Mughal days, probably an ice-salt mixture was used
to freeze it.

The ice cream served in Hyderabad’s shops today, as in the rest of
India, is the product of interaction between East and West. Europeans,
especially the ruling British, suffered even more than did Mughals in In¬
dia’s tropical heat. In a curious quirk of history, the ability to supply ice
on a commercial scale and the subsequent introduction of ice cream
into India linked the world’s oldest and youngest immigrant nations. It
was an American, Frederick Tudor, who first successfully shipped ice
from Boston to Calcutta in 1833. The event must have made the news
in New England. Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, “Thus it ap¬
pears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans,
of Madras, and Bombay, and Calcutta drink at my well . . . The pure
Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.” The
same Frederick Tudor is also credited with introducing the technique of
making ice cream to both India and Iran.

Sitting with Ananya inside the stark interior of Hyderabad’s most
famous ice-cream shop, I wondered what Frederick Tudor would think
of the offerings listed on a board against the blue wall. Under the cate¬
gory of “Brick,” which I took to mean large square blocks, you could
have the following flavors: Mango, Pista (pistachio), Vanilla, Stabry
(strawberry), Anjeer (fig), Dry Fruit (no further definition available),
and Butterscotch. Questions elicited only enormous grins, not answers,
from the man waiting on us. Another board carried illustrations of two
items, the Chocobar, popular with kids, and the traditional Kulfi. A third
advertised the Kasata, which was a pyramid sporting the colors of the
Indian national flag—a reddish-orange strawberry, a white vanilla, and
a green pistachio. Since the “brick” could be bought in quarters and

BANQUETS OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE

halves, we ordered portions of mango and vanilla. The texture of the
handmade ice cream and the intensity of the flavors were astonishing. As
we spooned up the confection, the relief from the heat and humidity
outside became more and more palpable. Unlike the Anjeer ka roll (fig
cooked with sugar like a preserve and encased in a shell of solidified
evaporated milk), which was introduced by a Turkish princess who mar¬
ried into the nizam family a hundred years ago, the ice cream has no
association with nizams or nawabs. But as I ate, I felt convinced they
would have relished this foreign invention even as they rued the foreign
invasions that eventually unseated them.

The descendants of the nizams still live in the city and maintain
homes in the countryside. One of them, Mehboob Alam Khan, is re¬
puted to be both a connoisseur of good food and a gifted cook. At one
of his dinners, he is said to have served forty dishes, all made with lamb,
but each one different. Every Sunday, he indulges his love of cooking in
the cause of philanthropy. He goes to his native village and prepares
a substantial lunch for three hundred or so villagers. The menu consists
of perennial Hyderabad favorites—pilaf, biryani, a variety of chicken
dishes, a hot and sour fish stew, a salan of large peppers. Only when the
villagers have been served do Khan and his family sit down for their own
meal. Noblesse oblige is still a motto to live by in the new millennium.

Chapter Eight

Benaras: Feasting and Fasting
IN Shiva's City

Delhi and Lucknow may symbolize the patrician Islamic culture of
northern India, but there is another city in the state of Uttar Pradesh (of
which Lucknow is the capital) that faces the world as Hinduism’s most sa¬
cred site. Varanasi, more familiarly called Benaras, is noted for its temples,
ghats (steps leading down to a river), pilgrims, and funeral rites, as well as
its music and street food. It is a peculiarly photogenic city where beauty
asserts itself in spite of claustrophobic, malodorous lanes often blocked by
the slow progress of a bull; the cloying smell of offerings and incense; and
a river choked with urban waste and the detritus of human cremation. In

H2 BENARAS: FEASTING AND FASTING IN SHIVA'S CITY

Benaras the business of death surmounts the business of worship, since
Hindus have believed for centuries that dying here ensures freedom from
rebirth and permanent salvation. As the river flows past the cremation
grounds every day, you see flowers offered to the dead being carried by a
current that has witnessed the unbearable and the unspeakable.

I was not interested in doing penance or finding salvation. I went to
Benaras looking for its worldly side, the side that glories in the pleasures
of food and drink, the side that has survived with hedonistic panache in
spite of the overwhelming aura of sanctity projected by temples, priests,
and worshippers. But the first thing that confronted me there made a far
greater impact than either the sacred or the secular. It was a human
tragedy I had always known about and yet pushed aside from the fore¬
front of my mind. Benaras has been, for centuries, the final destination
for Hindu widows, particularly young widows, packed off by their fam¬
ilies to live out the rest of their days surrounded by holiness, while
forced to endure nearly intolerable deprivation. Although widows from
many parts of India, especially northern India, were regularly exiled to
Benaras, probably no other state sent as many as my region, Bengal.

The life of the Hindu widow has always been the dark side of eat¬
ing in India, and nowhere was it darker than in Bengal. Not only was
the Bengali widow forbidden to remarry, as were widows from other
regions, she was also expected to give up a large number of common
foods permanently. In a fish-loving culture, she was forced to become a
vegetarian, giving up fish, meat, eggs, and even lentils, onion, and garlic
for her entire lifetime, which was also punctuated by frequent, rigorous
fasts. Her husband’s death was traditionally attributed to her misdeeds
and unnatural appetites; a common word of abuse in rural Bengal trans¬
lates as “husband-eater.” Guilty of the sin of survival, she was consid¬
ered a personification of disaster and bad luck, and as such, her presence
was forbidden at any happy ceremony, particularly weddings. If she was
allowed to stay with the family, her days were often spent in unmitigated
drudgery. In times past, when very young girls were often married off
to doddering old men, these deprived lives extended over many years—
a dreadful experience of thwarted desire.

EATING INDIA

143

Many families banished their young widows to pilgrimage centers
like Benaras for a variety of motives—to avoid scandalous possibilities
like clandestine affairs and illegitimate pregnancies, or to appropriate the
widow’s property, or simply to not deal with any sense of guilt or
compunction produced by her presence. Hundreds of miles away from
home, these lonely exiles were expected to find sublimation in devotion.
In reality, the sacredness of the city was small compensation for their
isolation and deprivation. Most lived like penitents waiting for the end
long before it was due. Others, unable to live on the meager pittance
sent by their families, ended up as beggars or prostitutes. The pleasures
of food, which might have partially compensated for the absence of a
married life, were on display all around them, only to underscore the
cruelty of fate.

As one might expect, widows from poor, rural, and uneducated fam¬
ilies always fared the worst. They are the ones who still throng the tem¬
ples and riverbanks of holy cities. But with urbanization and education,
the custom is slowly dying. My personal experience of a widow’s life
was rather different. I watched my grandmother spend the last twenty-
seven years of her life as a widow. There was no question of banishing
her anywhere. Nor did anyone even dream of blaming her for her hus¬
band’s death. Urban, middle-class families in Bengal had already moved
into a different way of thinking. Yet, there was no escaping the sense of
separateness that was imposed on her simply because of her widowed
status. I saw her change overnight, from a bossy, middle-aged woman
wearing a sari with a wide red border and bangles on both arms, into a
silent, shadowy figure in white. No borders, no color, no jewelry. Later,
as a teenager, 1 mostly noticed the strictures relating to food. How did
she feel, I wondered, when the large serving dishes of meat cooked for
Sunday lunch were brought in from the kitchen, filling the entire floor
with its rich, spicy aroma? Or when we ate fish jhol, with tiny new po¬
tatoes and green peas bobbing up and down? My grandmother served
the food, but never dined with us. Sitting away from everyone in a so¬
litary corner, she ate her simple vegetarian meal. Dinner often was noth¬
ing more than some fruit, milk, and a bit of popped rice. At the

H4 BENARAS: FEASTING AND FASTING IN SHIVA'S CITY

beginning of the monsoon came three days in the Bengali calendar
when it was forbidden for the widow’s food to be touched by fire. My
grandmother cooked enough food (with the exception of rice, which
was not allowed) to last her for that time, but she could not reheat any¬
thing. Watching the cold, stale luchis on her plate almost put me off my
favorite food. And then there were those days when she hardly ate a
thing. Unsaid penance? Unthinking observance? I still don’t know.

On the train to Benaras, however, I was not thinking about exiled wid¬
ows. They had not yet resurrected themselves in my consciousness. It
was the city’s long history that occupied my mind. Even in a country
filled with ancient legends, Benaras is remarkable. Although its begin¬
nings are shrouded in myth and mystery, Benaras was already a well-
developed settlement in 550 b.c., when Buddha came to preach his
message. Rising on the left bank of the River Ganges, it was often re¬
ferred to as Kashi, the City of Light, though unlike Paris, the evocation
this epithet carries is entirely spiritual. In the course of history, the sa¬
cred city of the Hindus attracted the wrath of Muslim conquerors and
rulers who demolished many of the temples and built mosques on some
of the sites. The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb—the same who besieged
Golconda Fort for eight months—was one of them. He built two of the
city’s landmarks, the Gyanvapi Mosque and the Alamgir Mosque.

But such destructive episodes are nothing more than the quiver of a
frown line on the forehead of Shiva, the patron deity of Benaras. The
city’s most famous temple, the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, is dedicated
to him, its gold-plated spire making it the Golden Temple for Hindus.
In many ways, Shiva remains the most intriguing member of the Hindu
pantheon. My early conception of him came from a framed portrait in
our house. This was no phallic symbol like the countless ones you en¬
counter in shrines, homes, and even street corners. It limned a serene
face, half-closed eyes (including the all-seeing third eye in the forehead,
a crescent moon underneath serving as a third eyebrow), a towering
bunch of dreadlocks on the head, and a large snake coiled round the
neck, rather like a feather boa. The portrait was neither a painting nor a

EATING INDIA

1^5

photograph. My mother had embroidered it on canvas and displayed it
prominently in the small room set aside for the gods. A teenager today, if
he or she were to observe this image without preconceived notions of
piety or disrespect, might easily find Shiva to be downright cool.

The myths and stories about Shiva that have grown over the cen¬
turies represent an astonishing amalgam of widely disparate imagina¬
tions. For one thing, despite being a god, he is perpetually high on
bhang and ganja, hallucinogens extracted from the dried leaves and
flowers of the cannabis plant. He is also pictured as the sole ascetic
among a pantheon of deities who seem as desire-driven and power-
hungry as humans. His utter indifference to material comforts has con¬
ferred on him the name of Ashutosh, he who is easy to please. In a
male-dominated society, women prayed for a husband who would be as
easygoing as Shiva, though more endowed with wealth and comforts.

The best stories about Shiva focus on love and marriage. In one, the
princess Parvati, whose father was Himalaya, the king of the mountains,
encounters this divine ascetic in the forest and falls madly in love. She
WOOS him by leaving her comfortable home and spending eons living
like an ascetic herself. In another story, depicting the more human side
of Shiva, he marries Sati, the daughter of a king called Daksha. When
her father insults Shiva, calling him a pauper and a junkie, Sati chooses
to die—the ultimate act of protest. The serene Shiva goes mad with rage
and sorrow. He picks up her body and whirls through the universe until
all creation is on the brink of annihilation. At the urging of gods and
men, Vishnu, the second powerful god of the Hindu trinity, cuts Sati’s
body to pieces with his magical whirling discus. With the loss of his
wife’s body, Shiva comes to his senses and the world returns to its nor¬
mal state. In Bengal, where the great and powerful goddess Durga is
worshipped for three days each autumn, she is perceived as the wife of
Shiva, the mother of his four children, a royal princess who has given up
all the trappings of wealth and gone out begging with her rice bowl to
support her family—all out of love for Shiva. Whenever I heard these
stories, expertly narrated by my grandmother, I was ready to fall in love
with Shiva myself.

146 BENARAS: FEASTING AND FASTING IN SHIVA'S CITY

But then there was the other aspect of Shiva as Nataraj, the cosmic
dancer, who starts the process of dissolution of the universe when it is
old and decayed. It was hard for me to reconcile that image with every¬
thing else I had been told, particularly when I contemplated the serene
image embroidered by my mother. As I grew older, the portrait made
me think of Shiva as a center of stillness and detachment, a last court of
appeal in the maze of dilemmas and traumas that made up life—an idea
that seemed utterly ironic later, when I considered the exile of Hindu
widows to Shiva’s holy city.

The Ganges, India’s holiest river, adds to the sacredness of Benaras.
In Hindu mythology, she is a goddess who resided in the dreadlocks
gracing Shiva’s head. An ancient king prayed and fasted for a long time
and persuaded her to come down to earth to purify and reanimate the
remains of his ancestors. Although the Ganges flows through the central
Indian plain all the way to the Bay of Bengal on the east, it makes a
crescent-shaped detour in Benaras, changing its flow from south to
north, as if longing to go back to its source in the Himalayas. The east¬
ern bank, facing Benaras, has been left mostly undeveloped except for an
ancient royal palace. The bare stretch on the other side can almost serve
as a metaphor for the state of salvation, which entails the shedding of
both the mortal coil and the material needs of life on earth. It further
reinforces the Hindu belief about dying in Benaras to obtain salvation.
For centuries, people have come to Benaras as they sensed the approach
of death. Some were even taken to the riverbank by their families to
await the end (for days if necessary), so that their last sight and sound
would be that of the holy Ganges whose waters can wash away all sins.
For the living, too, a daily dip in the Ganges has the same purifying
effect.

After checking into a hotel, the first thing I did was to slowly make my
way to the river, like any tourist. The afternoon light was strong; and
there I saw them. Widows leaning out of ramshackle balconies, crowd¬
ing in front of the temples, sitting on the concrete ghats by the river,
standing waist deep in water and praying with their eyes closed, all dressed

EATING INDIA

in dingy white, many with shaved heads, their somber faces lined with
resignation that seemed worse than anger. Some sat on the steps with
begging bowls into which people dropped coins, no doubt to further
their chances of salvation. Others, after bathing and praying, gathered
for sermons around priests and Brahmins who sat and read aloud from
Hindu holy texts. One group of widows chanted hymns, rocking to a
monotonous rhythm. What would they eat when they went home?
A lump of cold boiled rice and a few vegetables, perhaps. Or maybe a
couple of dry chapattis. Or a handful of puffed rice and some roasted
chickpeas. Or it could be nothing. Perhaps only one meal was permissi¬
ble and that had already been consumed.

Knowledge is inescapable. Ever since I had learned about the fate of
Hindu widows, especially the fish-deprived Bengali ones, these women
had inhabited my dreams, my awareness; but, like many uncomfortable
truths, they had been pushed back into invisibility. Benaras paraded them
before me in the garish light of a stuffy afternoon. In a country that
boasts of hospitality to strangers, these daughters, mothers, and sisters
were humiliated with unsatisfied hunger and desire, every single day. This
was one of the many contradictions of India, even modern, youthful, up-
and-coming India. Despite my lack of religious faith, I almost felt like
petitioning Shiva—the one who had inspired such love in a princess that
she willingly renounced her wealth for his ascetic lifestyle—to let loose
his cosmic energy and rewrite these lives.

The ghats are shallow, tiered steps, starting high above the river in
front of the city’s fabled temples. Each ghat has a name and a story. I
went down one set of steps until I came to the bottom. Looking to my
left, I saw the smoke rising from another ghat further downriver. This
had to be the Manikarnika ghat, where the dead are cremated after last
rites have been performed. Despite my Hindu ancestry, I had never been
to a cremation ground before. Swirls of smoke rose from the pyres, mer¬
cifully obscuring the human remains that were being processed. But
there was no missing the charred logs, flower garlands, and other re¬
mainders of death rituals that floated on the water. The bells ringing in
the temples behind me and the chanting of Sanskrit mantras addressed

H8 BENARAS: FEASTING AND FASTING IN SHIVA's CITY

to the gods filled me not with serenity, but gloom. The sluggish Ganges
looked like a river to the underworld, not heaven.

I turned my back on the river, climbed up the stairs, and went into
the city. The business of death can only thrive on the shoulders of the
living. I needed to find a place where there was no obsession with death,
widowhood, or the rituals of privation.

The secular realm of Benaras bustles with humanity, a choking, concrete
miscellany of boxy office buildings and brightly painted narrow houses,
dirty alleys, and traffic-clogged crossroads. Amid the crowd and the
squalor, there is a spirit that is hospitable, enterprising, and pulsing with
life. Like Lucknow, Benaras had a reputation for beautiful courtesans
and dancing girls who entertained their guests with utmost sophistica¬
tion. Although these women have vanished along with a way of life cre¬
ated by wealthy landlords and princes, the narrow, winding, congested
lanes of Benaras are alive with another form of live entertainment. Ven¬
dors serve and customers wolf down quick-cooked fare that is cheap,
hot, and freshly made, running the gamut of flavor, texture, and temper¬
ature. Benaras’s fast food is not all that different from that of other
cities. I saw potato patties called aloo tikias; the phuchkas we ate in Cal¬
cutta; chaats, with their typical crunchy-soft textures; and that delightful
invention, kachori, which has as many incarnations as a Hindu god. Ka-
choris are stuffed disks of crisply fried dough, but the outer texture and
the inner filling can make them either plebeian or gourmet fare. The
ones sold in the fabled Kachori Galli in Benaras are to die for, their fill¬
ings including asafetida-flavored dal paste and a spicy combo of peas and
potatoes. Eating piping hot kachoris together with ghugni, a concoction
of chickpeas, with dollops of tart and zesty chutneys on the side, can be
more satisfying than meals in many five-star restaurants. If much of the
pilgrim’s day is fasting and praying and cleansing the soul, more than
enough compensation for the body awaits them in these hole-in-the-
wall eateries.

In one undistinguished backstreet, I came upon a preparation of
cubed cooked potatoes seasoned with hot, molten clarified butter, a

EATING INDIA

dollop of yogurt, chopped fresh cilantro, and a dash of syrup. The taste
was eclectic and delicious. There were savories galore, including the fa¬
miliar samosas stuffed with peas, cauliflower, and potatoes; fritters made
with chopped spinach and chickpea batter; and crisply fried pappadams.
Eager jostling crowds kept lining up all afternoon and well into the eve¬
ning, and a patient eavesdropper could hear conversations in multiple
Indian languages.

If the street food of Benaras conforms to the greater Indian tradi¬
tion, the drinks carry the city’s unique signature. Despite the intrusion
of colas and sodas that have become quenchers of choice in places like
Calcutta and Bombay, the residents of Benaras still retain a passion for
milk-based concoctions that reminded me of the American love of
shakes and frappes. Coming as a student from Calcutta, where milk was
expensive and sometimes unavailable, I had been blown away by the lit¬
eralness with which one could describe America as the land of milk and
honey. Supermarket shelves groaned under the weight of cartons and
bottles of plain and flavored milk. In my dormitory cafeteria, fellow
students supplemented their platefuls of food with glasses of thick,
creamy milk that they downed the way I drank water. I could not ac¬
quire their taste for the white stuff, but I never ceased to marvel at its
easy, cheap availability, at the tall glasses of chocolate milkshakes that I
saw children drinking.

In Benaras I saw an Indian city with an enthusiasm for and seem¬
ingly equal availability of milk. Very early one morning, I wandered
onto a street that widened into a small square cul-de-sac. In front of a
sweetshop, the owner was already at work with a couple of assistants.
Two enormous black kadhais sat on portable stoves, one containing gen¬
tly bubbling milk, the other full of oil. Fascinated, I watched as, time
after time, the sweet maker skimmed off the puckered skin that formed
on top of the hot milk. These creamy layers would then be pressed to¬
gether, cut into squares, and floated in a sweetened milk syrup scented
with saffron and garnished with pistachio, to make that utterly sinful
dessert—rabri.

The confectioner’s head was completely shaven, except for a tiny

160 BENARAS: FEASTING AND FASTING IN SHIVA'S CITY

lock of hair at the back. From the hygiene perspective, this was an easier
alternative to wearing a chef’s cap, especially in a hot climate, but its pur¬
pose was likely to indicate that he was a Brahmin. In caste-bound Hindu
society, the Brahmin not only had status as a priest, he was also desirable
as a cook, since his touch was pure enough for the food to be eaten by
everybody, including other Brahmins, and also offered to the gods. After a
while, although we hadn’t spoken a word, the man concluded I must be
hanging around waiting for the typical street breakfast of hot milk and
sweets. A slightly chipped glass full of hot milk was extended to me. At
this hour and in this space, I felt I could not refuse. I took small sips, and
diverted myself watching the other two men frying jilebis. But not for
long, since I knew I risked being handed a plate of those, too.

The Benaras residents’ passion for dairy was demonstrated in count¬
less other places. Later that same afternoon, I found myself in another
section of town where vendors sold the yogurt-based lassi that has be¬
come so popular in Indian restaurants in America. The drink was served
in clay containers called kulhads. Standing away from the line of cus¬
tomers, I watched them down their stuff and smash the containers by
throwing them on the ground, as we used to do with earthen cups of
chai on the trains of my childhood. For those who did not care for yo¬
gurt, there were milky concoctions in many flavors and colors, but these
were served in glasses that were definitely not to be smashed. The steam
arising out of some glasses again demonstrated the preference for milk
to be served hot.

“Madam wants to buy a drink?”

I spun around to find a portly, balding man behind me, dressed in a
crisply starched embroidered Indian kurta and white pajamas. He was
no poor pilgrim, satisfying hunger and thirst at the least possible ex¬
pense, as I could tell from his pudgy fingers, each adorned with a heavy
gold ring sporting a different gemstone.

As the stranger’s smile widened, it revealed teeth stained not only by
betel leaf and areca nut, but also the telltale tint of tobacco. I glanced
around and realized, that propelled by curiosity, I had unconsciously
inched forward and broken into the line of customers.

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‘T’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get in your way,” I replied. Quickly, I
made my way down the lane, bumping into backs, elbows, purses, and
bags, marveling at the endless business of cooking, blending, and eating
that was going on. This unself-conscious yet focused voracity was what
I had missed in other, bigger cities. Perhaps, I thought, when a city is
celebrated as a destination for dying, its residents develop an unusual in¬
tensity for living. Even within the corsetlike confines of an odorous lane
where two can barely walk abreast, nothing could distract the eaters
from eating, not even the massive bulls and sprightly goats that occa¬
sionally pushed their way through. Bulls have special status in Benaras,
not simply because of the Hindu reverence for the sacred cow, but also
because of the belief that when Shiva needs a ride, it is the great bull,
Nandi, who carries him.

Before long, I found myself being accosted again by the same per¬
son. He had finished his drink and caught up with me much sooner than
I would have thought possible.

‘T can see you’re a tourist,” he said. ‘T don’t mean to bother you,
but this is my city and I could tell you a few things that guidebooks
won’t. That is, if you care to tell me what particularly interests you.”

“Everything,” I said blandly.

“Everything?” he repeated, clearly taken aback. He must have ex¬
pected me to say architecture, religion, history, or some such thing.

I nodded, hoping that would make him give up on me and go away.
But he was made of tenacious stuff

“Well, here you can experience street food in Benaras, madam,” he
said, with an expansive gesture of his arm. “The items are not all that
different from what you get in other cities, but the people of Benaras, I
think, eat everything with more enjoyment.”

I was surprised to have my own perceptions echoed so well.

“However,” he continued, “if you want something that’s really spe¬
cial to Benaras, you need to drink, not eat. Have you tasted the sherbets
yet? Have you had thandai?”

I shook my head, slowing down despite myself.

“Oh, madam, you must. But first, I must introduce myself.”

152 BENARAS: FEASTING AND FASTING IN SHIVA’S CITY

He fished out a business card from his breast pocket and held it out.
I was almost about to take it, when an irrational impulse overcame me.
With hindsight, I like to think it was the worldly spirit of Benaras, whis¬
pering that even the slightest intimacy should be carefully considered.

“Please,” I said, smiling to take the offense out of my words, “let’s
not be conventional. Since this is your city, let me think of you as the
voice of Benaras. Let’s talk about the city, about the people, about these
drinks that seem to promise such revelation, not about ourselves.”

A short, fraught silence, broken by laughter. My companion was
prepared to be a good sport, for the moment. And the moment was all
that mattered.

“In that case, madam, let’s walk. Can you . . .” he peered downward,
trying to see if my sari concealed unsuitable high heels or sensible
footwear.

“I can.”

There followed a serendipitous afternoon during which Benaras un¬
folded itself as layers of history and legend were peeled back, as time
and events crisscrossed back and forth. My companion, it turned out,
was a superb and knowledgeable narrator. As evening fell, we found our¬
selves on the top steps of a ghat 1 had not seen before. It was the Dhobi
ghat, where men and women did piles of laundry, using not only soap
and water, but also the time-honored technique of beating the clothes
hard on the stone steps. Perhaps, I remarked to Mr. Benaras, this was an
appropriate zone for a sinner like me; my soul could do with some
scrubbing and cleaning.

“I think you’ve heard too much history,” he replied, “and you’re
tired. Why don’t we walk back to one of my favorite sherbet sellers? If
we go through this lane here, we’ll be passing through the Bangali Tola.
You’ll see your people wandering about, speaking in Bengali.”

“No,” I said firmly. 1 did not want to be reminded again about the
hapless Bengali widows, some of whom might still be found in this
neighborhood. “Take me through a different route. And tell me about
the sherbets.”

Merely hearing about the ingredients that are used to concoct

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153

Benarasi sherbets (tall cold drinks, but not aerated like sodas and colas)
can provide a magic carpet ride to a leisurely time when the world was
small and mysterious, when new spices were still being imported from
unknown lands. Crystallized rose petals, the purple juice of a fruit called
phalsa, the yellow pulp of a fruit called bel, saffron from Kashmir, the
fragrant essences of sandalwood and screw pine flower, and many other
elements lend color, scent, and sweetness to these drinks. Even more in¬
triguing, on a really hot day, you can have the drink as a “gola.'' Akin to
snow cones, the Benarasi gola is a handful of ice, crushed and shaped
into a ball, with the chosen flavoring of the sherbet sprinkled over it. A
stick poked into the ball allows you to slowly consume it like an ice¬
cream bar. By the time we got to a sherbet seller, my inner eye was filled
with a host of historical characters—princes, courtiers, queens, eunuchs,
musicians, housewives, and laborers—savoring these subtly flavored
drinks not simply because of the taste, but also because of the painstak¬
ing creativity that went into their making. How can a bottle of soda,
churned out by a vast manufacturing plant, slake the thirst and spike the
imagination in quite the same way?

“For the people of this city, the signature drink is the thandai,” Mr.
Benaras told me, “far better than the usual sherbet. It’s a decoction of
water, sugar, melon seeds, almonds, cashews, and fragrant spices like car¬
damom, anise, and saffron.”

“Well, then, I must have some of that,” I declared, deciding not to
worry about the purity of the water.

“But to really enjoy thandai,” my companion said with a sly glint in
his eyes, “you have to be brave. The best thandai has a dollop of bhang
in it.”

Oh no. Bhang was the substance that Shiva was supposed to get high
on. I should have expected someone in Benaras would try to persuade me
to have some.

“In my young days,” he went on, “we used to go out for bhang par¬
ties. Those were great times. The bhang was very superior in quality and
taste. The leaves were crushed in big mortars, and cream, orange pulp,
white pepper, and almonds were added. The paste was then blended with

154 BENARAS: FEASTING AND FASTING IN SHIVA S CITY

milk or thandai. You mustn’t think we did it for intoxication, the way
people get drunk,” he added quickly, misinterpreting the look on my face
as disapproval. ‘‘For us, it was a sophisticated pleasure.”

“And you think, if I were brave, I would try it.”

“But I know you won’t.”

“Not this time. I’d rather try the sherbet with rose petals.”

He paid for two glasses and handed me one. We sipped in silence. It
felt like drinking cool attar, a little overwhelming at first. But in a while,
the fragrance mutated to a serene sense of well-being that ran all
through my body. Was this Shiva, touching me gently, trying to dissi¬
pate the melancholy of accumulated widowhood that was oppressing
me? Or was it a spirit from some Middle Eastern land to which the rose
was native? Mr. Benaras was looking at me with a very kind smile, as if
he knew exactly how I felt.

“You must come back to Benaras when you are brave. To know this
city the way you want to, you have to taste a bit of bhang here. If Benaras
has a culture, it is not that of morbidity, death and salvation, nor is it the
kind of frantic capitalism that’s taking over all the cities in India. The real
lesson of this city is that you need very little to find a kind of content¬
ment that’s both aesthetic and spiritual. But you have to make the most
of that very little. There’s a saying about the typical Benarasi. If he earns
ten rupees, he feels he has enough. He will give his family five rupees and
feel he has done his duty. Then, after a refreshing bath in the Ganges—
and this goes for Hindus and Muslims alike—he will spend the rest of his
money on simple but good food, followed by a betel leaf wrapped around
spices and scented tobacco. Finally, he will indulge in a drink laced with
a small amount of bhang. And he will feel as rich as a king.”

I laughed. It really seemed like a good recipe for happiness. But I
knew I wasn’t gifted enough to incorporate it into my life. Maybe some
day in the future. I said good-bye to Mr. Benaras, feeling we had spent
just the right amount of time together. On my way back to the hotel, I
saw a sign outside a restaurant advertising pizza made with yak’s milk
cheese from Nepal and real espresso. The moving finger was writing
fast, I thought, adding to the layers of Benaras’s identity.

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155

On my last evening, I bought some hot, fragrant kachoris and a leaf
bowl full of large, saffron-colored jilebis, dripping with syrup. I made
my way to one of the ghats and sat down on the lower steps. Several
children played hopscotch on the broad landing above me. Across the
river was a setting sun, the darkening outline of an old palace, and un¬
occupied stretches of land. Boats carrying sightseers, students, merchants
passed before me like images in a film. The failing light obscured the
sludgy, sluggish quality of the river’s water. I ate my kachoris slowly, let¬
ting the heat, scent, and spiciness fill my mouth. My surroundings dis¬
solved and were replaced by a vision of legions of city dwellers all over
India, touching the strands of unreal contentment—all you need is ten
rupees, he had said—radiating out of this chaotic, dirty, death-oriented
city that pulsed with a life that was aggressive, brash, and savvy.

By the time I was ready to eat my jilebis, dusk had become darkness
with tropical speed. Little clay lamps, set afloat on the river, their wicks
burning bravely despite the breeze, came sailing down my way. I ate a
Jilebi, crisp and syrupy, and tasted perfection. The temple bells spoke to
me not about deliverance, deprivation, or exploitation. Instead, they car¬
ried the voice of Shiva, the cool, cosmic dancer with dreadlocks, en¬
couraging me to savor this moment before it vanished.

PART THREE

Chapter Nin e

Art and Texture on the
Gujarati Platter

Time to take another look at the map. India’s western coast stretched
along the Arabian Sea, peppered with magical names like Goa, Bombay,
Mangalore, and Cochin. But it was the upper northern and western re¬
gions of the country that held my eye. Two states lay side by side, Gu¬
jarat and Rajasthan, each endowed with its own wealth of magic and
myth. Of the two, Gujarat has more variety of terrain and resources and
consequently, a richer culinary history. The enterprise of the Gujara¬
tis has made them successful immigrants in many countries, including
the United States, the United Kingdom, Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia.

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ART AND TEXTURE ON THE GUJARATI PLATTER

Throughout India, too, the spirit of Gujarati enterprise is highly visible.
The people of Rajasthan (literally, land of the kings), meanwhile, have a
near-mythical reputation for bravery, heroism, and survival in harsh con¬
ditions. The great Indian Thar Desert is part of Rajasthan. One interest¬
ing difference between the two states lies in public perception. Rajasthan,
with its glamorous palaces, its colorful people, and arresting landscape, is a
primary tourist destination for both Indian and foreign travelers. Gujarat,
by contrast, has a more low-key presence, despite its wealth of art, craft,
architecture, and cuisine.

The majority of the people living in these two states are vegetarians
and their cooking reflects, on the one hand, a wealth of artful creativity,
and on the other, an ingenious resourcefulness that is born out of harsh
conditions. Religion is another important factor behind the cuisines of
Gujarat and Rajasthan. The Hindu majority are not the only ones who
adopt a vegetarian diet. Gujarat is also the birthplace of Jainism, a reli¬
gion older even than Buddhism. In advocating ahimsa (nonviolence),
Jains have adopted an extraordinarily restrictive way of eating. Muslims,
as everywhere in India, are nonvegetarians, though many of them avoid
shellfish and pork. But it is another Gujarati community, Parsis, whose
eating habits are at the farthest extreme from those of Jains. Except for
the one element of beef, Parsis have one of the most joyfully inclusive
diets in the country. The coexistence of these communities in Gujarat
has created an extraordinary variety of food, cooking techniques, ritual
practices, and eating habits. I knew it would take many explorations to
gain a thorough knowledge of all of them. For now, I was happy to en¬
large my horizon in whatever way possible. And I wanted to start with
the mainstream vegetarian cuisines of the region.

The first time I became aware of Gujarati food was when I was thir¬
teen. It was a moment fraught with family tensions. At that time, my
parents and I were still living with our extended family in my grandpar¬
ents’ large, rambling Calcutta house. Khokon, my youngest uncle, was
only eight years older than I was, and I considered him more an older
sibling who did fun things with me, than an uncle. To my widowed
grandmother, however, he was a headache, the fatherless, youngest child

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161

whose waywardness almost outweighed his precocious academic bril¬
liance. Culturally, he was a rebel. He used up his pocket money to buy
records of Western rock and pop music that he played loudly, to my
delight—he was the one who introduced me to Elvis, whose star was
already waning in America, but who was unbearably exciting to a
teenager in pre-MTV Calcutta—and the outrage of the elders in our
orthodox family. He argued with my grandmother bitterly and often
about lots of things, but mostly, being a budding gourmet, about the
boring, undistinguished meals that our cook served up every day. Eating
out regularly or getting takeout food from restaurants was not an option
in those days unless you had plenty of money to spare.

Late one summer afternoon, as I slid down the banister from the
third to the second floor—a hoydenish trick Khokon had taught me, to
the great annoyance of the other adults—I came upon a scene of silent
drama. Through the door of the dining room, I saw my uncle sitting at
the table, helping himself to food from a tiffin carrier, the kind of con¬
traption in which my mother and aunt had loaded a delicious meal for
my first memorable train journey from Calcutta to Puri. As my grand¬
mother stood glaring at him, Khokon filled his plate not only with
bread, rice, and vegetables, but also with some intriguing-looking foods
rd never seen before. Ever curious, I marched in and asked what the
stuff was. It was a signal for the outburst my grandmother had been
checking till then. From her indignant tirade I gathered that Khokon, by
then a medical student, had ordered a week’s home delivery of food
cooked by the wife of a Gujarati patient he had met at the hospital. Ac¬
cording to him, although these Gujaratis were vegetarians, their food
was still preferable to the execrable efforts of our cook, even when he
made fish and meat. Ignoring my grandmother, Khokon asked me to
taste anything I wanted from the plate. Eagerly, I moved closer.

‘T forbid you, absolutely forbid you to touch any of that,” yelled my
grandmother.

“Go on, you’ll see how delicious it is,” urged Khokon.

I stood, hesitating between the two—but only for a few minutes. The
pull of the unknown was much too strong. Quickly, I leaned forward,

162

ART AND TEXTURE ON THE GUJARATI PLATTER

scanned the unfamiliar items, and helped myself to a miniature strip of
yellow material, rolled up like a mat. There were several of these on the
plate, garnished with white coconut shavings, dark mustard seeds, and
green flakes of cilantro. The thing melted in my mouth, leaving an inde¬
scribable aura of delicacy in texture and flavor. I looked at my uncle and
grinned. I knew that he knew I was on his side in this matter of import¬
ing exotic food. That yellow roll, 1 learned, was called khandvi, a Gujarati
farsan (snack) made from a batter of chickpea flour and buttermilk. A
good khandvi requires an artist’s hand, and Khokon’s patient’s wife had
that. My uncle then offered me a piece broken from a thin, brittle sheet
of a bread called khakda, which looked like a brown pappadam to me.
I ate it and my mouth tingled with the sharpness of cumin seed and
some other unknown spice. There were also some steamed savory cakes
made, like the khandvi, with chickpea flour and covered with a tamarind
sauce. These, said my uncle, were called rasya dhokla (dhoklas in sauce).
More substantial than the khandvi, they were equally delicious.

Years later, I pondered the contrasting geography that provides the
frame within which the artists of the Gujarati kitchen create such highly
textured, colorful, and savory food. To the northwest, Gujarat expands
into the peninsula of Kathiawar, which juts out into the Arabian Sea.
A conglomeration of small princely states at one time, Kathiawar has a
long and rich history. India’s most famous leader, Mahatma Gandhi, was
born in its coastal town of Porbandar. The area’s dairy products serve as
a reminder that in 1946, Gujarat became the birthplace of India’s first
national dairy cooperative.

Although noted for the famous Gir National Park and Wildlife
Sanctuary—the only habitat of the Asian lion—Kathiawar is more arid
than lush. North and west of Kathiawar spread the desolate salt flats of
the Rann of Kutch, where Gujarat abuts Pakistan. This desertlike cli¬
mate has generated an immense variety of homemade pickles (athaanas)
that add extra zest to a vegetarian spread. The women of northern and
western Gujarat are not merely good pickle makers; their creativity, and
that of the women of Rajasthan, is magnificently displayed in the vivid

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163

colors and bold embroidery of their textiles. For many years, my vision
of this enormous zone consisted of a line of rural women, their clothes
flamboyant against the sand and scrub of their land, heavy silver anklets
sweetly chiming with their steps, going to fetch water from the wells.
Some of these, called step-wells, have intricate and often beautifully
carved structures surrounding them, deep underground. Image trans¬
lated to reality when I observed the brightly clad women of Kathiawar
in the busy, well-populated towns of central Gujarat—the state’s farm
belt—where they are eagerly expected migrant laborers in the winter
and spring. They go from house to house, their task being to clean, sift,
sieve, winnow, grind, and organize the year’s supply of spices and grains,
which are stored in the lofts of houses. This system works only in a dry
climate. In humid Bengal, the entire stored supply would become a bug
and fungus-riddled disaster in a few months’ time.

I had wanted to arrive in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s former capital and
still the commercial and cultural center, on or before the fourteenth of
January. The day is an auspicious one in the Hindu calendar—Makar
Sankranti, when the sun transits the zodiac from Sagittarius to Capri¬
corn. In Bengal, I had grown up with the tradition that enforces a
monthlong ban on eating radishes from this day. In Gujarat, however,
Makar Sankranti is celebrated with a kite festival, sweets, and a special
ritual of feeding cows (if you happen to own any). Unfortunately, I
couldn’t get a seat on a plane until the following day. As we neared the
city, its aerial view evoked the embroidered symmetry of a patchwork
quilt—neat fields of varying sizes, colored by the crops that grew on
them, bordered by irrigation channels. The channels indicated that agri¬
culture in Gujarat is managed with the same efficient focus that has
made the people of this state so successful in business. Had Babur, the
Mongol conqueror, come to Gujarat now, he would not be able to crit¬
icize the people of India, as he did in his autobiographical Babunjcima,
for not managing their crops with irrigation. Coming lower and closer,
however, I was startled by what appeared to be an enormous sandy ser¬
pent coiled around the city of Ahmedabad. It took me a while to figure
out that this was the dried-up bed of the Sabarmati River, beside which

ART AND TEXTURE ON THE GUJARATI PLATTER

164

Gandhi built his ashram in 1915. Today, the only part of the river that
has survived nature’s aridity and man’s dam-building is near the ashram.
The dried riverbed circling the city hints at the power of the northern
desert.

Southern Gujarat is the state’s greenbelt. The heavy rainfall from
the southwestern monsoon brings the reward of lush and plentiful veg¬
etables. Here, the city of Surat is a favorite destination for food connois¬
seurs, who may travel in the winter from other parts of the state simply
to sample the superb, seasonal produce. Winter is the season to make one
of the most famous Gujarati dishes, oondhiu, a melange of vegetables
dotted with dumplings. Most Gujaratis will tell you that a good oondhiu
can only be home cooked, not found in a restaurant, the same as we
Bengalis say about our celebrated fish jhol. Aside from produce, the
southern towns of Gujarat are also noted for their individual specialties.
The residents of Surat, for instance, celebrate the autumn full moon by
eating ghari, a kind of fried bread with a sweet filling. According to
some estimates, two hundred tons of ghari are dispatched by avid towns¬
folk in one day. Surat, a bustling center of commerce from medieval
times, is also famed for its diamond industry. This glittering gem has
taken such a hold of the local imagination that even potato chips are
sold under the brand name Diamond. They come in bright-colored
packages, the flavors ranging from plain salted, to chatpati masala or
spicy lime.

Another southern town, Bhavnagar, posed the most intriguing co¬
nundrum in the authenticity debate during my stay in Gujarat. I had
gone to the opening of a painting exhibition in Ahmedabad, invited by
the artist Haku Shah and his wife,Vilu. 1 had met the couple several days
before in their tiny, two-storied house ornamented with exquisitely
carved wooden doors and windows. Over cups of afternoon tea, we had
talked about the strong artistic traditions of Gujarat, the architectural
heritage of Ahmedabad, and Haku Shah’s efforts to promote interreli¬
gious harmony. All the time, 1 had been aware of an air of unworldly
contentment that seemed to wrap them around like soft, handwoven
Gujarati shawls.

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165

The opening was packed; I could hardly get close to any of the
paintings. After a while, I decided to wait for the crowd to thin. A long
table loaded with coffee, tea, soft drinks, and munchies promised re¬
freshment in one corner of the gallery. When I went over, an elegantly
dressed man with a white goatee politely poured me out some coffee.
He, too, was a nonresident like me, a visitor from England. The next
morning he was going to his hometown, Bhavnagar, for a niece’s
wedding. We talked about wedding rituals and feasts—Bengali and
Gujarati—and to my amazement, he said that no wedding in Bhavnagar
is complete without ice cream. Why, of all things, ice cream? Tradition,
he answered with unshakeable firmness, like Tevye the milkman in the
musical Fiddler on the Roof. I thought of the quirky ice-cream shops that
Hyderabad is justly famous for, but nowhere in India had I heard that ice
cream was an obligatory part of a traditional Indian wedding. It con¬
firmed the notion that upending the old and the new, custom and inno¬
vation, is what India is about, and has been for centuries.

Several days after the missed kite festival, I called Rathin Das, a fellow
Bengali and a reporter for one of India’s leading newspapers. 1 had got
his number through some journalist friends in Calcutta. Das has lived in
Gujarat long enough to speak the language fluently. We met in his office
one afternoon and, over a cup of strong office-brewed tea, he listened
politely as I talked about my journeys through India’s food, past and
present. From the bemused look on his face 1 guessed that though he
wanted to help, he couldn’t think how. However, just as I was trying to
find a way to let him off the hook without appearing too cavalier, I no¬
ticed the sudden gleam in his eye. He pulled the phone toward himself
and quickly dialed a number. The conversation, being in Gujarati, was
beyond my ken. At the end of it, though, 1 had an invitation to have
lunch the next day with Digant Oza, a freelance journalist and author
with a passionate interest in water management issues.

Mr. Oza greeted me warmly when 1 turned up at his house the
next day. A white-clad, portly figure with a balding head, he has the ex¬
pression of a happy cherub, and an infectious, burbling laughter you

166

ART AND TEXTURE ON THE GUJARATI PLATTER

wouldn’t expect from reading his fiery newspaper articles berating the
sectarianism of the Hindu fundamentalist party ruling Gujarat. He is
also a born raconteur. Listening to his spate of stories about life and
food in Gujarat, I relished the serendipitous connection that had led me
to him through meeting a fellow Bengali. I asked about the caste hierar¬
chy in Gujarat and learned about the Nager Brahmins, a subsect of
Brahmins with superelevated status and an extraordinary purity of diet.
The influence of the nonviolent Jains, said Mr. Oza, can be seen even
among the Gujarati Hindus, many of whom prefer to avoid tomatoes or
red lentils because the color reminds them of blood. But the best story
he told me was about one Gujarati’s determination to defy the unfair¬
ness of the colonial rulers. At the end of a train journey, this man was
suddenly informed that “regulations” required him to pay an extra sur¬
charge to transport his box of thirty-two pounds of pedas—a rich sweet
made with solidified evaporated milk—before being allowed to cross
over to the other side of the station. If the railway officials were hoping
to get a free load of sweets, they were disappointed. The man got off the
train, sat on the platform, defiantly consumed the entire consignment of
pedas, crossed over, and went on his merry way.

Digant Oza and his wife had a relative visiting them from New Jer¬
sey. The Ozas’ daughter, Kajal Oza-Vaidya, a novelist and a scriptwriter
for Gujarati television, had also dropped in. Kajal told me that her
mother was considered a superb cook, an expert in all the traditional
Gujarati dishes. When we all sat down for a vegetarian lunch—that
home-cooked meal I was so longing for after weeks of travel and eating
in hotels, shops, and restaurants—the first thing I noticed was the rolled-
up khandvi that I had once tasted from my uncle Khokon’s plate. To one
used to the Bengali hierarchy of eating, the typical Gujarati meal seems
to be rather haphazard. Partly this may be because there is no transition
from vegetarian items to fish and meat. On the Oza’s dining table, there
were snack-type foods like khandvi and dhokla, along with complex
vegetable preparations to be eaten with fried whole wheat breads called
theplas. Frequent dips into the pickle containers were irresistible. In be¬
tween, we sampled laddoos—spherical sweets, made with wheat flour.

EATING INDIA

167

brown sugar and ghee. Portions of rice and khichdi (rice cooked to¬
gether with green, not yellow, moong dal) were served with hot, melted
ghee poured on top. Small, individual serving bowls contained the fa¬
mous kadhi, eaten both in Gujarat and in neighboring Rajasthan—a
soup made with buttermilk and chickpea flour. When at last oondhiu,
that classic of the Gujarati cuisine, made its appearance, I noticed that
my own excitement was matched by the anticipatory exhalations of
everyone around me. And why not? It was a perfect blend of seasonal
vegetables, exquisitely spiced, and dotted with tiny dumplings flavored
with fenugreek greens. Mrs. Oza certainly deserved her reputation as a
culinary genius. At the end of this feast, I could only manage a tiny
spoonful of the almond-and-milk dessert that she brought out. The Ozas
claimed the meal was nothing special. To me it demonstrated the one
thing I had heard about Gujarati food—that it is all about texture. When
I left my hosts, after receiving a farewell hug from Mrs. Oza and an
open invitation for the future, I felt that hunger might be the best sauce,
as popular wisdom has it, but spontaneous hospitality showered on a
stranger came a close second.

I had often wondered why a coastal state like Gujarat should have a pri¬
marily vegetarian cuisine, and the delightful meal at the Ozas’ again
raised the question in my mind. All along the western coast of India
south of Gujarat, people enjoy fish and meat, especially fish. Why was
Gujarat so notably different? Of all the Indian states, this is the one with
the highest percentage of vegetarians.

Everyone I spoke to agreed it was the predominance of Buddhism and
Jainism for many centuries in Gujarat that was the biggest factor behind
this preference for vegetarianism. In the third century B.C., the Hindu em¬
peror Asoka, who started out as a ruthless conqueror, was eventually so
sickened by the carnage of war that he converted to Buddhism. From that
point forward, he zealously promoted nonviolence with edicts and procla¬
mations engraved on stone pillars. One of these, still standing in Girnar,
Gujarat, declares, “No living being may be slaughtered for sacrifice,” di¬
rectly flouting Hindu ways of worship dating back to the Vedic period.

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Jainism, whose origins predate Buddhism, was even more emphatic
about every creature’s right to live. Jains totally reject Hinduism’s caste
hierarchy and the concept of obtaining merit through ritual and sacri¬
fice. For them, it is the individual’s conduct that matters. As children in
Calcutta, my friends and I were familiar with stories about Jains who
walk with extreme caution, lest a single ant or beetle be crushed under
their footsteps, while some even wear masks lest they inhale or swallow
a tiny flying insect. These, however, are the extreme observances of asce¬
tics. The average urban Jain, trying to make a living and raise a family,
gets around like the rest of us. Instead of being unworldly philosophers
pondering the questions of life, death, and nonviolence, many Jains are
extremely successful entrepreneurs. Even the art of cooking has been
turned into an opportunity for making money; Jain pickles and pack¬
aged snacks are hugely popular in cities all over India.

With regard to food, however, most Jains still remain strict vegetari¬
ans. In Gujarat, I learned about some of their more orthodox practices.
They avoid tubers and roots (potatoes, radishes, carrots, onions, garlic,
ginger, or turmeric), since digging these up might harm insects that live
underground. They also avoid multiseeded fruits and vegetables, such as
figs and eggplant. The promise of life inherent in such produce is too
important to be sacrificed to the lust of the palate, a point of view that
might seem excessive even to the most ardent pro-lifers in America.
Honey is forbidden food, since removing it from the comb would in¬
volve the death of bees. Even betel leaves, the pan-Indian after-dinner
chaser, are out of bounds, since they are always smeared with a lime
paste to which ground-up shells are often added. As for the thin silver
foil that is used as a decorative coating for cardamom seeds or sweets,
Jains won’t touch it, since the metal has to be beaten to papery thinness
between layers of soft leather or, worse, the intestines of cows. One eve¬
ning in Ahmedabad, I saw a restaurant sign proclaiming the availability
of “Jain pizza,” that is, pizza without onions in the topping. Like so
much in India, this, too, was an example of ingenious adaptation, being
the other end of the spectrum from the chicken tikka masala pizza. On
reflection, I felt that never being able to taste the pleasures of onion and

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garlic and potatoes was a loss, but there was some consolation in the fact
that no observant Jaiii would be tempted to gorge on the great evil of
the modern Western diet, “supersized” French fries.

As if living with so many dietary restrictions was not enough, Jains
also have an annual eight-day fast for further mortification of body and
soul, during the holy festival of Paryushan. It falls in the middle of the
rainy season, and a Jain ascetic is supposed to survive only on boiled
water during this period. Most people, even observant ones, find it im¬
possible to be so rigorous. Instead, the usual human compromises are
made—some will fast on the first and last day, others may choose a few
days in the middle. Those who eat during Paryushan have greater-than-
usual restrictions on what foods are permissible. Greens, normally rel¬
ished, are forbidden at this time, in a symbolic acknowledgment that the
monsoon rains bring to life a host of insects that might cling to the
leaves. Jains don’t even garnish their khandvis and dhoklas with fresh
coriander leaves. As a result, they tend to make the most of legumes and
beans, rice, wheat, milk products, and permissible fruits and vegetables. I
used to think that Bengalis displayed the greatest ingenuity in the use of
the banana, until I came across two items in a Paryushan menu. Gujarati
Jains take ripe, unpeeled bananas, split them partially, and stuff them
with chickpea flour seasoned with a chili-cumin-coriander powder, a bit
of sugar, and a few green chilies, and fry the bananas over low heat. An¬
other tasty but unexpected use of the same fruit entails taking the skins
of ripe bananas, frying them with spices, and coating them in a sauce of
chickpea flour.

Most Gujaratis, of course, are neither Buddhists nor Jains, but Hin¬
dus. Vaishnavs, a major sect among Gujarat’s Hindus, are followers of the
god Vishnu (better known as one of his incarnations, Krishna). They,
too, advocate nonviolence and purity in food and tend to be vegetarians.
In fifteenth-century Gujarat, vegetarianism as a general preference got a
shot in the arm when a Vaishnav guru settled there and acquired large
numbers of followers, from all segments of society.

In the context of dietary choices and habits, India is a rare instance of
a land where nature has been an enabler in the adoption of vegetarianism

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for almost three millennia (the first practitioners of Jainism go back to the
seventh and eighth centuries B.C.). The sheer size of the land and the vari¬
ations in climate and geography have made it possible to adopt a diverse,
healthful, and tasty diet made up of cereals (rice, wheat, millet, barley,
corn, sorghum), vegetables, fruits, and dairy products. The process of
cooking transforms the raw material with flavorful oils and ghee, zesty
spices, and, in the case of desserts, sugar (from the indigenous sugarcane)
and honey. As a result, eating vegetarian in India has never been a condi¬
tion of deprivation or asceticism—unless you deliberately made it so—as
it would be in colder, northern terrains or vast areas of desert. A fine culi¬
nary imagination has made the Gujarati vegetarian platter particularly art¬
ful and delicious.

Inevitably, the question of vegetarianism made me contrast Gujarat
with my native Bengal. For several centuries, Buddhism was a major in¬
fluence there, though the people who converted from Hinduism were
mostly from the lower rungs of the caste and economic ladder, not the
powerful opinion makers or trendsetters. The same Vaishnav tenets of
nonviolence that Gujarat adopted in the fifteenth century were also en¬
thusiastically adopted by many Bengalis around the same time, because
of the charismatic Bengali preacher Chaitanya. Both Buddhism and
Vaishnav beliefs have left their mark in Bengal’s rich and varied veg¬
etable dishes and Bengalis’ love of many kinds of dal (pulses) as a
protein substitute. Yet, the overall preference for fish has never been
eradicated. Nature, which has filled the terrain with countless rivers and
lakes teeming with fish, has been a bigger deciding factor than any man¬
made religion. In Gujarat, the tension between geography and faith is
manifest in the fact that residents of the coastal areas have not let their
diet be influenced by Buddhism, Jainism, or Vaishnavism. Having regu¬
lar access to fish, they relish a varied oceanic harvest that includes such
marine species as siya, dantiya, and kunga. The fact that many of Gu¬
jarat’s fisherfolk also happen to be Muslims and tribal people adds to the
complexity of the picture.

There was one question about food that 1 wanted answered before
leaving Gujarat—was there any truth to the popular misconception that

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it is an overwhelmingly sweet cuisine? My personal eating experiences
so far had not supported the notion. For an expert answer, I decided
to talk with Abhay Mangaldas, the proprietor of Agashiye (Terrace) in
Ahmedabad, a rooftop restaurant with a flamboyantly multicolored can¬
opy that reminds the beholder of Gujarat’s other claim to fame, textiles.
I invited Haku and Vilu Shah to have lunch with me there, as they also
happened to know Mangaldas.

We ordered the deluxe thali. In India, the well-traveled person
sometimes bemoans the lack of aesthetic food presentation, compared to
what is seen in other Asian countries, especially Japan. I’ve always felt
that the aesthetics exist in India, but in a style suited to the heartier,
spicier cuisines of the land and the habit of eating with one’s hands.
However, if there were any awards to be given for food presentation, the
thali at Agashiye (the actual plates are made of kansa, an alloy of five
metals traditionally considered good for memory and purifying the
blood) would be a strong contender. Even peripheral items like pickles
gladdened the eye. I was particularly charmed by one I had never had,
pickled young turmeric, the tiny pieces set out on half a betel leaf. Its
sharp yet delicate taste was nothing like the taste of the spice we use in
cooking, the powder made from dried turmeric rhizomes. Haku
and Vilu were amused by my ecstatic response. In Gujarat, said Vilu,
the turmeric is considered auspicious, as in many other parts of India. It
is welcomed at all times except in Hindu houses of mourning, where it
is forbidden. Tiny cubes of ginger pickle, lying on another half of a be¬
tel leaf, provided a different kind of sharpness. Both these rhizomes are
considered digestives in the Indian traditional system of medicine,
Ayurveda.

As we made our way through a number of vegetable dishes, I could
see that Agashiye’s claim to providing the freshest produce of the day
was not an empty boast. The seasoning was minimal, but the taste am¬
brosial. The meal began with rotis (breads), which included both plain
wheat chapattis and theplas, the latter fragrant with ghee, to be eaten
with four different vegetable dishes. Well-known Gujarati farsans
(snacks) including khandvi and dhokla were also presented, providing

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the tongue with a different textural interlude. Bowls of yellow moong
dal and kadhi came next, and 1 dipped pieces of chapatti in them, a de¬
parture from my usual habit of eating dal with rice.

Before the rice and some more vegetables were served, we were
given some rabri, a liquid milky dessert, flavored with pistachio and saf¬
fron. Unlike the frozen northern Indian kulfi or the rich Bengali rabri,
this was light and refreshing, almost serving as a palate cleanser, the way
sorbet does in French cuisine. In the Gujarati tradition of eating freshly
made sweets along with the main meal, there was a very rich halvah,
made with white gourd and evaporated milk. After the rice, served with
a couple of different vegetable dishes, we segued to khichdi. As I had
seen in the home of the Ozas, liquid ghee was poured on top of the
khichdi. Guests at Agashiye are free to ask for as much ghee as they
want—an option that Haku Shah made the most of. Watching the
waiter pour the tiny spoonfuls from a metal bowl, I envied the way
Haku’s trim figure had defied ghee’s effects.

Finally, it was time for dessert, the kind that is supposed to end the
meal. The waiter appeared with two kinds of ice cream. Was there no
getting away from this foreign confection? The Shahs informed me that
Ahmedabad restaurants take pride in making their own ice cream; they
don’t serve the commercially packaged brands. In which case, I thought,
remembering the man from Bhavnagar, perhaps it is not such an oddity
for a town to adopt ice cream as a “traditional” part of the wedding
banquet. A perfect triangle of plain vanilla ice cream was placed before
me in a translucent gray-green bowl—a nineteenth-century American
novelty, embraced with enthusiasm and now integrated into the native
food pantheon. Agashiye ends the meal with some chasers and mouth
fresheners—betel leaves wrapped around sweet spices, supplemented
with miniature titillations for the palate, such as cubes of candied
tamarind pulp seasoned with cumin and other spices, freshly grated co¬
conut, and tiny pieces of excellent chocolate.

After lunch, we went downstairs to take a look at the courtyard
restaurant, where the ambience is that of a casual cafe. Already, the staff
was getting ready for clients who would turn up for tea and snacks. In

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one corner, three people were busy making yet another sweet item,
malpoa. This is not unique to Gujarat; aside from neighboring states like
Rajasthan, far-away Bengal, too, makes a fetish of malpoa. When made
well, it is irresistible. Large dollops of flour and evaporated milk are first
deep-fried in ghee and then dipped into syrup. In Bengal, the dough is
flavored with the seeds of the large black cardamom, whose fragrance is
more potent than that of the green variety. At Agashiye, malpoa was fla¬
vored with saffron, a richer perfume harking back to the sultans’ court.

It was in this atrium-like restaurant that I had the opportunity to
spend some time talking to Abhay Mangaldas about Gujarati food and
cooking. The son of a wealthy Gujarati family, Mangaldas spent several
years in the United States, studying communications at Boston Univer¬
sity. He is tall and on the slim side, with a neatly trimmed black beard.
His casually sophisticated manner is more than complemented by his
boundless energy and hands-on style. One of the first things he asked
me was how long I was staying in Ahmedabad. When I told him, he
looked disappointed.

“Pity,” he said. ‘T would have organized a Bengali cooking class
with you, but it wouldn’t be possible till the end of next week.”

Relieved at not having, myself, to teach anyone else to cook, I
changed the subject to his restaurant’s fortuitously historic location. It is
part of an enormous redbrick structure owned by the Mangaldas family.
Directly opposite stands the exquisite Sidi Saiyad Mosque, named for a
slave in the court of the sixteenth-century Muslim ruler Ahmed Shah.
That there were African slaves in India is a commonly forgotten foot¬
note to the country’s history. They were brought to India by the Arab
traders as early as nine centuries ago. Some were also brought by
the Portuguese in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from their
African colonies in Mozambique and Angola. But many Africans also
came to India on the Arab merchant ships as traders, soldiers of fortune,
and travelers, and eventually settled down along the country’s western
coastal areas. Their descendants, called Sidis, are to be found now in In¬
dian cities, especially Bombay, but the largest concentration is in a vil¬
lage in Gujarat called Jambur. The Sufi Islam they practice is enriched

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by singing and drumming in the style of many African communities.
But their food shows no link with Africa. They have wholeheartedly
adopted the rice, dal, bread, and vegetables of their adopted land. The
delicate stone filigree work on the Sidi Saiyad Mosque presents a nice
counterpoint to the solidity of the Mangaldas edifice, which has now
been declared a heritage site.

To maintain high standards, Mangaldas said he makes a point of
serving only the freshest of seasonal produce in his restaurant; the menu
changes almost daily, depending on what the market offers. All aspects
of the business, from shopping to creating the daily menu to supervising
the kitchen, pass under his eagle eye. He described the Gujarati thali as
a basic template on which you can add, subtract, change, and modify a
whole range of vegetables, cereals, legumes, condiments, pickles, chut-
neys. When I asked him about the supposed preponderance of the sweet
element in the region’s food, Mangaldas was quick to refute the idea.

“It’s a misunderstanding,” he said. “The reason is that many of the
cooks in Gujarati restaurants are from the neighboring state of Rajasthan.
They have migrated here in large numbers in search of better economic
opportunities. The dominant note of sweetness is a characteristic of the
food of many parts of Rajasthan, and these cooks have continued their
own cooking style. Authentic Gujarati food is not sweet at all.”

However, he pointed out, eating habits are changing in Gujarat, as
everywhere else, and many Gujarati Hindus are now nonvegetarians.
The concession they make is in limiting the consumption of such items
to outside the home, which is still kept free of polluting animal foods.
This was nothing new to me. I had met plenty of Marwaris in Calcutta
who did the same.

The migration of sweet-fingered cooks from Rajasthan to Gujarat
provides one of numerous fascinating examples of influence and meta¬
morphosis within India. It is only natural that cooks from Rajasthan, a
land where survival is a struggle and nature far from bountiful will make
the most of nonperishable elements like sugar and ghee and buttermilk
to give tone, depth, and nuance to their food. A wide variety of breads,
plain and fried, as well as stuffed with spices and nuts, is a big part of the

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Rajasthani diet. The region’s best-known dish is possibly one called dal-
baati-churma, in which five kinds of dal are cooked together and served
with flaky baked bread, the baati. Leftover dough is deep-fried in ghee,
crumbled into pieces, and mixed with brown sugar to be eaten as an im¬
promptu dessert, the churma.

Since fresh vegetables are limited in Rajasthan, whatever is har¬
vested has to be dried and preserved for long-term use. One legendary
dish called ker sangri consists of wild berries and beans that flourish
even under the harshest conditions. Dried and sold in the markets, they
are combined with oil, spices, and powdered, dried green mango (to add
tartness to the dish). So popular is it that few traditional weddings take
place without having this on the menu. Vegetarian or not, food in Ra¬
jasthan has a rich undertone, since people have compensated for the
scarcity of water by cooking with plenty of oil and ghee. To balance the
richness, digestive spices like asafetida, ginger, and ajwain are liberally
used. Royalty here, as everywhere else, made a practice of hunting, and
meat was certainly a feature in the royal banquets. Lai maas (literally, red
meat, though it denotes the color of the gravy, not the type of meat) is a
noted presence on the nonvegetarian’s plate. The arid shrub terrain ac¬
tually produces the best kid goat meat in the country, according to some
experts.

Aside from sending migrating cooks to neighboring Gujarat, Ra¬
jasthan is notable for its Marwari business community, whose spectacular
grasp on business and the ability to create wealth could have provided
ample fodder for economists from Adam Smith onward. The world’s
largest steel enterprise is now owned and operated by a Marwari from
Calcutta, Laxmi Mittal. And Marwari enterprise is not limited to inedible
steel. Haldiram, a company originating in the Rajasthani city of Bikaner,
has become a byword for packaged sweets and savory snacks throughout
India. Bengal owes a special debt to Haldiram for popularizing its classic
confections, such as the rajbhog, rosogolla, and pantua, in other parts of
the country. These are canned and shipped by Haldiram not only within
India, but also for the consumption of Indians abroad.

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Eating Gujarati food day after day was making my thoughts wander off
in strange directions. True, the theory about this cuisine being sweetly
one-dimensional had been laid to rest as a fallacy. Nevertheless, I found
myself laboring under the cumulative effect of all the sweets I had been
eating. Even with my Bengali sweet tooth, I felt badly in need of a saline
immersion, figurative, if not literal. On the map, I looked again at Gu¬
jarat’s northwestern reaches, the salt flats of the Rann of Kutch. The
area had been devastated by the terrible earthquake of 2001. But its
people, mostly tribals, are hardy souls. Processing salt is one way they
earn a living. Strange myths emanate out of the region, like the one
about a demigod named Lord Dattaray who once chopped off his hand
to feed a hungry jackal. At his shrine, food is still cooked and offered not
only to the god but to the local jackals as well.

Salt is earth, salt is life, and nowhere is salt sprinkled more thoroughly
through the historic narrative than in Gujarat. Salt created a significant
turning point in India’s freedom struggle because of Gujarat’s famous
son, Gandhi. During colonial rule, the British government had a monop¬
oly on the production of salt. Its sale or production by any other person
or group was punishable by law. In a humid, tropical country like India,
salt is even more necessary for survival than in colder temperate zones.
For ordinary people, especially for those living in the low-lying coastal
areas, salt was an easily available natural resource. Yet, the British forced
Indians to pay for it through the salt tax, generating profit for themselves.
Gandhi decided to organize a nonviolent protest. On March 12, 1930, he
set out with a group of male followers on foot, for the coastal village of
Dandi, where they planned to make the prohibited commodity by boiling
sand in seawater. Despite violent attacks by the police, Gandhi and his fol¬
lowers, joined by local people, persevered. Richard Attenborough’s biopic
Gandhi includes a dramatic depiction of the incident. The effect of the
Salt March—whose symbolism is as potent as that of the Boston Tea
Party—was electric and felt all across India. Making salt became a way of
nonviolent agitation against colonial rule. In today’s mechanized world,
coastal people in Gujarat still make salt by trapping seawater in dams. The
salt they make is stored in highly visible piles on the beach.

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I thought again of all the Gujarati pickles I had eaten and the role
of salt in preserving food and adding savor to it. There could be no
pickles without salt; no cooked food would last even half a day without
salt in this hot zone. Gandhi, growing up in the home of traditional Gu¬
jarati parents, must have had his share of mouthwatering pickles with
which the vegetarian thali is enlivened. Yet, as an adult and the leader of
the nation, he expressed an attitude toward food that bordered on the as¬
cetic. On the walls of the Gandhi Ashram by the Sabarmati River, are
large framed excerpts of his thoughts on this matter. “Eating is nec¬
essary only for sustaining the body and keeping it a fit instrument for
service and must never be practiced for self-indulgence. Food must
therefore be taken like medicine, under proper restraint. In pursuance of
this principle, one must eschew exciting foods, such as spices and condi¬
ments . . . this principle requires abstinence from the feasts or dinners
which have pleasure as its object.”

Of course such rules could only be imposed on the members of his
ashram, his direct followers. Even so, I found it hard to accept such total
repudiation of spice—a commodity that had drawn so many to India for
so long—from an Indian. No wonder the mahatma breezed through
long periods of fasting as frequently as he did. To the colonial rulers, for
whom India had been such a long-standing source of wealth, luxury,
and exotic pleasures, a man like this must have been unfathomable.

Gujarat’s other extraordinary community, creators of one of India’s
richest cuisines, are the Parsis. Descendants of Persian Zoroastrians, they
arrived in India after the Muslim conquest of Iran in the seventh cen¬
tury. Fleeing from oppression, carrying the sacred fire they worshipped,
many of them made their way to other countries in the Middle East.
Some of them later set sail for India, and the story of their arrival is one
of my favorite food myths.

Shipwrecked off the coast of Gujarat, the Zoroastrians sent three of
their dasturs (priests) to the king to ask for permission to settle in his
land. But when the king saw them, he guessed their intent and tried to
turn them away. Instead of a rude rebuff, however, he used a symbolic

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gesture, showing them a bowl filled to the brim with milk. The message
was that his kingdom had no room for outsiders. The chief of the das-
turs, equally adept at diplomatic communication, sprinkled some sugar
into the milk and said that the milk was sweetened, but it had not over¬
flowed. The king was impressed. He allowed them to stay and practice
their religion on condition that they conform to local cultural norms.
From these beginnings, rose a community whose achievements in cul¬
ture, business, law, medicine, and cuisine are inversely matched by the
smallness of their numbers. Although their presence is now concentrated
in Bombay and other large Indian cities where business and professional
opportunities took them, Parsis still speak Gujarati among themselves
and have many customs in common with their fellow Gujaratis.

The story about their arrival appeals to me for two reasons. It re¬
minds me of European communities that once came to the New World
in the hopes of escaping persecution and finding religious freedom. It is
also, intrinsically, a very Indian myth. The idea of blending two ele¬
ments we consume, so that the lesser loses its separate identity and yet
lends character and flavor to the greater, occurs in another instance cen¬
turies earlier, in the ancient Indian philosophical text, the Upanishads.
The son of a famous sage asked his father how he would define Atman,
the universal spirit. The father took a pitcher of water and sprinkled a
handful of salt over it. Once the salt had dissolved, he asked his son to
drink the water and describe the taste. Salty, said the son. But, replied
the sage, though one can taste it, one cannot see the salt; Atman, too, is
like that, invisible even as it permeates all forms of existence.

The Parsi community’s wide-ranging, inclusive cuisine (its major
omissioii being beef, in deference to the Hindu kingdom that had given
shelter to the original Zoroastrian refugees) is the product of one of In¬
dia’s most fascinating stories of origin, merger, and transformation.
During my school and college years in Calcutta, I never personally got
to know any Parsis. Their numbers are small and the largest concentra¬
tion is in Bombay. But it was impossible not to be aware of them. The
leading English newspaper in the city, the Statesman, was edited and
owned by a Parsi. The biggest business conglomerate in India at that

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time, the Tata Group, owed its origin and success to a notable Parsi fam¬
ily. And on some evenings, when my mother’s older brother, a doctor,
saw patients in his office on the first floor of our house, I would see a
shiny black Mercedes pull up, from which descended a portly lady wear¬
ing her sari in the Gujarati fashion—my uncle’s sole Parsi patient. When
I left home for graduate studies in the United States, a friend and col¬
league of my mother’s gave me an exquisite “tanchoi” brocade sari as a
farewell present, telling me that the technique of weaving this textile
had been brought to India from China in the nineteenth century by
three Parsi brothers who traded in Chinese silks.

Given their high achieving history, one might expect Parsis to be
intense type-A personalities, who have no time for the pleasures of the
table. In reality, the Parsis have imbued their culinary tradition with joy¬
ful creativity. Their religious/ethical beliefs, focusing on “good thought,
good word and good deed,” do not include rigorous, self-mortifying,
lengthy fasts nor do they focus on abstemiousness as a virtue. Vegetari¬
anism is almost unheard of among Parsis. Even the fabled Gujarati
oondhiu, which I ate in the house of the Ozas, undergoes an extraor¬
dinarily inventive carnivorous transmutation in the hands of the Parsi
cook and becomes the oomberiu. Potatoes, eggplant, onions, garlic, and
a kind of bean called papri are combined either with lamb or game birds
like partridge or quail, whole eggs, oil, and spices, and layered inside an
earthen pot lined with banana leaves and mango leaves. The mouth of
the pot is tightly sealed with several layers of banana leaves. A hole dug
in the ground is filled with twigs and straw, which are set on fire. When
the flames die down a bit, a large whole potato is put in the center, the
sealed pot inverted over the potato and the flames kept alive for a cou¬
ple of hours, while the meat and vegetables cook gently. Once the po¬
tato is cooked, the contents of the pot are done. Like the vegetarian
oondhiu, oomberiu is a winter dish. It is easy to imagine the enjoyment
derived from the smoky flavors of the meat and vegetables in a clay pot,
savored in the smoky dusk of an Indian winter.

Parsis’ distant origins in Iran are still reflected in the rich festive pilafs
they make, studded with nuts and raisins, often combined with the meat

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of lamb and kid goat, and flavored with saffron. And in spite of now be¬
ing dispersed in major Indian cities, they still observe customs that are
rooted in their earliest days as an agricultural community in Gujarat.
Some involve ascribing connotations, auspicious or otherwise, to food,
much as the Hindus do. Thus prawns, normally a great favorite, are never
served on important, celebratory occasions like weddings or coming-of-
age. Parsis believe that prawns, being bottom-feeders, live on the flesh of
the dead. Conversely, no celebration can be complete without liberal sup¬
plies of three items—sweet yogurt, a puddinglike confection of semolina,
and a sticky, syrupy, fragrantly spiced dish made with vermicelli.

One custom that has survived from the Parsis’ rural roots has little
to do with actual cooking, but everything to do with aesthetics. Some
time before visiting Gujarat, I happened to meet Mrs. Thritty Dastoor, a
Parsi lady in Calcutta. She asked me to come over for tea one afternoon.
As I stepped out of the elevator, I noticed exquisite patterns drawn with
rice flour on the landing and in front of the apartment door. In answer
to my query, Mrs. Dastoor, an elegant woman with a brisk manner and
a friendly smile, said that each day the floor is wiped clean and new de¬
signs are painted. The ritual is a rather charming leftover of an old rural
custom of strewing powdered lime around the house as a method of re¬
pelling insects and reptiles. This same distant past is evoked in the har¬
vest festival that the community still celebrates, although any direct
connection with the agricultural way of life has long vanished. Parsis in
modern India are mostly urban professionals: artists, scientists, writers,
lawyers, and businesspeople.

Just as the Rajasthani cooks are supposed to have left their sweet im¬
print on some Gujarati cooking, Parsi food has been subjected to two dis¬
tinctive influences in relatively modern times. When Goan chefs began to
work in Parsi households in Bombay, they introduced two of their staple
ingredients, coconut and kokum, a sour purple fruit that is often used in
place of tamarind in the cuisines of Goa and Mangalore. Some of the
glories of modern Parsi cuisine, like patra ni macchi, fish smothered in a
coconut and green chili paste and steamed in a banana leaf, may owe its
origins to these cooks. Parsis have also been influenced by the colonial

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British, with whom they socialized because of their international business
enterprises. Quick to adopt the values of Western enlightenment—Parsis
opened the first girls’ school in India in 1849, and the country’s first
woman barrister (British-trained lawyer) was a Parsi named Cornelia
Sorabji—they eagerly took on Western culinary concepts and made them
their own. The result is evident in Parsi menus and cookbooks, which
may include custer (custard), sas (sauce), estew (stew), and roasts.

It is, of course, the wedding banquet that presents the finest and
most varied examples of Parsi cooking and illustrates the interplay of
influences that have enriched the original Zoroastrian repertoire. De¬
spite having left their village roots far behind, Parsis, unlike the Bengalis,
still serve their traditional wedding feast, or patra no bhonu, on a banana
leaf, although in deference to modern. Westernized mores, the banana
leaves are spread on tablecloths and napkins and cutlery are provided.

Thritty Dastoor described the menu for one of her family weddings.
It started, Gujarati style, with tangy pickles and bread, after which the
guests were served patra ni macchi; chicken in a rich sauce accompanied
by julienned potatoes; a vegetable stew with Parsi seasoning (notably, the
unique spice mixture called dhana-jiru); a lamb bafad, in which the meat
and vegetables are cooked with hot spiced vinegar; eggs on tomatoes; the
traditional wedding custard, called lagan nu custer, which is thick enough
to be eaten with a knife and fork instead of a mere spoon; a rich, saffron-
scented lamb pilaf with thick dal; and finally, traditional Indian kulfi. The
livers and gizzards of the chickens used for the banquet were not wasted
either; they were made into a dry, spicy dish called aleti paleti, which is
generally eaten by the family members at the end of the banquet. Parsis
actually have an affinity with Muslims in their fondness for offal; they
have numerous ways of cooking the trotters, brains, hearts, lungs, and kid¬
neys of the lambs they slaughter. As if this wedding menu was not lavish
enough, there were other items on the side, such as sweet yogurt (auspi¬
cious everywhere in India), sweet fruit pickles, and one tasty incongruity,
potato chips, there called wafers. The final chaser of betel leaf and spices
sent the guest on his way to gentle digestion.

A single festive menu like this one presents a miniature history of

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ART AND TEXTURE ON THE GUJARATI PLATTER

the evolution of Parsi cooking in the sequence of serving the items, the
ingredients used in the dishes, and the method of preparation. The cus¬
tard’s coming in the middle of the meal echoes the practice of sweets
being served in the middle of Hindu Gujarati meals. The steamed fish
and the lamb in vinegar indicate the influence of the Goan cooks. The
pilaf with meat and saffron is a direct descendant of the pilafs of ancient
Persia. Tomatoes cooked with the eggs are the contribution of the colo¬
nial British, as are the potato chips.

As for the eggs, the Parsi fondness for this particular item is leg¬
endary. Almost anything can be combined with eggs—the phrase being
per eeda —to become doubly desirable. Eggs are boiled, scrambled,
poached, and made into omelets for breakfast, but again with the unique
Parsi touch. The eggs on tomatoes served at the Dastoor wedding were
not plain, as they usually are on a British or American table, but an elab¬
orate production seasoned with a host of ingredients—onions, ginger,
garlic, green chilies, turmeric, red chili powder, a little vinegar, salt, and
even a touch of sugar. Even bananas—slightly unripe—are cooked
with eggs. To my mind, however, the most incongruous combination is
what the Parsis call “wafer per eeda.” Once I learned of its existence,
I couldn’t rest until I had tried it out myself—sauteing onions and green
chilies in a large skillet, unloading a bag of potato chips over them,
making several nesting holes among the chips into which I broke the
eggs, and letting the whole thing cook until the eggs were set. Eating
this was an eye-popping experience, reminding me again that texture is
the dominant element in any cuisine originating in Gujarat.

The most famous Parsi dish, dhansakh, is likely to have derived from
the Iranian khoreste esfannaj: both are a combination of meat, lentils, and
spinach. It is often included in family meals—a big Sunday lunch in a
traditional Parsi home generally means happily loading up on dhansakh
and other delicacies, the men drinking beer, and everybody collapsing
into a much-needed siesta after the meal. But it is never served on aus¬
picious or happy occasions because of its association with death and fu¬
nerals. Parsis don’t eat meat for three days after a death in the family; on
the fourth day, the abstinence is broken by serving dhansakh to family.

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friends, and visitors. Non-Parsis sometimes find themselves unable to be
as enthusiastic as Parsis about this specialty (literally grain and vegeta¬
bles); yet, the variety of recipes (from families and professional chefs) for
dhansakh could well fill a whole booklet, indicating how it has stimu¬
lated the Parsi culinary imagination. Six kinds of dal, cubed lamb, nu¬
merous vegetables, herbs, and greens, are combined and cooked with a
host of seasonings, the dish being finished off with a sweet-and-sour
bath of tamarind extract, lime juice, and brown sugar. The usual accom¬
paniments are brown rice, kebabs, and a salad of onions, tomatoes, green
chilies, and cilantro, with a sour tamarind dressing.

What about sweets? Could a community put down roots in Gujarat
and not be subjected to its sweet temptations? Hardly. A community that
displays such a wide-ranging appreciation of food would be unlikely to
limit itself merely to the custer, kulfi, sweet yogurt, or semolina and ver¬
micelli confections. The influence of British and European cookery on
the Parsi kitchen is seen in the numerous souffles, parfaits, flans, and cakes
presented at dinners and parties, many of them, like mango souffle, skill¬
fully adding Indian ingredients to Western techniques. Sweets from all
over India, whether the halvahs and jilebis of the North, the chhana-
based sweets of Bengal, the rice puddings and evaporated milk sweets
such as peda—all are grist for the Parsi sweet tooth. A most delightful
Parsi invention is the malai na khaja, a baklava-like dessert with a filling
of sweetened, rose-flavored cream. The use of rose petals, whether in this
dessert, or in jams, or in the rose water liberally sprinkled over pilafs, per¬
fumes the memory of an ancient connection stretching back to Iran.

However, as with so many rich and traditional foods of India, the
culinary culture of the Parsis, too, is endangered—not merely because
fewer people have the patience to learn the intricacies of these recipes,
but also because of the rapidly dwindling numbers of the community it¬
self. Good Parsi restaurants, as there are quite a few in Bombay, cannot
quite fill this vacuum. A paean of praise to Parsi cuisine, therefore, hov¬
ers on the edge of an elegy.

Chapter Ten

Bombay: City by the Sea

When the Portuguese wrested seven small islands on the west coast of
India from the sultans of Gujarat, and gave these the collective name of
Bom Bahia (Good Bay), they couldn’t possibly have imagined the mag¬
nitude of size, wealth, and squalor the place would embody several cen¬
turies later. The Portuguese later ceded the islands to the British as part
of the dowry brought by Catherine of Braganza when she married King
Charles II in 1662. Under the British East India Company, to whom
Charles II leased the property in 1668, the islands of Bom Bahia (later
connected artificially) became Bombay, an enormous port, teeming with
mercantile enterprise.

In postcolonial independent India, the city continues to grow. It

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throbs with the pulse of commerce, desire, illusion, and creativity. Like
New York, it is the financial capital of a huge country. Like New York, it
lures people with dreams of fortune and success, boasting an extensive
mythology of rags-to-riches stories. Like New York, it can be cruel be¬
yond imagination. And unlike New York, it is the home of one especially
glamorous business: India’s fantasy-peddling film industry, Bollywood.

One of the first things I did on getting into Bombay was to call
a remarkable Parsi couple I had met in the 1980s, the painter Jehangir
Sabavala and his beautiful wife Shirin. Even after all these years, they re¬
membered me and, with characteristic Parsi hospitality, they invited me
to dinner the next evening. The Sabavalas’ apartment, near Kemp’s Cor¬
ner, is exquisitely decorated. From my previous visit, I recognized the
fine wood furniture with intricate carvings, the bookshelves, and the
paintings. Most of all, I recognized the high, spacious balcony where I
sat with their other guests and enjoyed the freshening touch of a salty
evening breeze blowing in from the Arabian Sea.

What astonished me, however, was how remarkably unchanged both
Jehangir and Shirin were. Their good looks and charm had successfully
defied age; and, talking to Jehangir, I was again touched by his cultured
gentleness. At eighty, he is still painting as actively as ever. Indian art
is now slowly acquiring buyers in the international market, and Shirin
proudly told me about her husband’s works being auctioned at Sotheby’s.
When dinner was served, I noticed that both husband and wife anxiously
supervised the arrangement of the food on the table, instead of leaving it
to the servants. I did not remember much of what I had eaten in their
house seventeen years ago, except that it had been delicious. On this eve¬
ning, however, I had the opportunity to see the Parsi imagination—a
combination of East and West—in the items on the table. There were
crepes with a vegetable and fish filling, covered with a white sauce; a large
serving dish of pilaf sat next to a plate of plain chapattis. A spicy prepa¬
ration of sauteed okra—left whole to display their elegant length—was
good enough to make a whole meal with. But the star of the show was a
glorious rawas (salmon), stuffed with spices and roasted whole. Even as he
urged his guests to eat well, Jehangir, I noticed, hardly touched anything

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BOMBAY: CITY BY THE SEA

except a salad of dressed lettuce, claiming that his digestion was too deli¬
cate to tolerate much at night. However, his pleasure in our enjoyment of
the meal was evident. Afterward, when dessert, a chocolate mousse—like
confection, was brought in, I was touched and amused to see the great
Parsi painter help himself liberally. A child was still alive inside the artist
who had lived through so much. When we hugged each other to say
good-bye, I felt almost tearful.

Extremes abound in Bombay, which has been recently renamed Mumbai
after a Hindu goddess. The necklace of lights around the city’s Marine
Drive at night and the tail-towered skyline of Nariman Point during
the day are mesmerizing. Secretive mansions along the leafy inclines of
Malabar Hills hint at the presence of wealthy celebrities. A handsome,
uninhabited building in this area is the house where the architect of
Pakistan, Mohammad Alijinnah, once resided. Under a dipping western
sun, the imperial majesty of the Gateway of India monument, built by
the British, confronts the dark outlines of catamarans casting small,
humble shadows on the Arabian Sea.

But there are also hungry-eyed urchins fighting over a section of
watermelon around the town-size slums of Dharavi; road-choking, pol¬
luting traffic; throngs of workers disembarking at Victoria Station; and
hundreds of men and women manually washing the city’s clothes at
Dhobighat, an enormous space full of concrete water tanks and scrub¬
bing stones. They provide the counterpoint to the glittering image the
city loves to cultivate.

Sitting with a sandwich and lemonade in a roadside cafe, I managed
the odd interval of contemplation. The residents of Bombay paraded
before my eye, loitering, rushing, arguing, playing cards, and selling, sell¬
ing, selling. Another day, at a restaurant called Badshah, established in
1905, I sampled the famous Parsi drink called falooda, a favorite of the
Mughal emperor Jahangir—whole milk, combined with ice cream, rose
syrup, and frozen cornstarch noodles in a tall glass—before strolling into
the colonial enclosure of Crawford Market. Having stopped to admire a
pyramid of fresh pineapples, I jumped back with a scream as a white

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turkey nonchalantly stepped over my feet, and Bombay burst into up¬
roarious laughter around me.

Like New York, Bombay is a city where local, national, and international
cuisines are forever fusing into something different. The diversity of its
neighborhoods is matched by the variety of its eateries—upscale, mid¬
level, and downright casual. In this city, filet mignon is as available as
bitter melon, avocados as much as Alfonso mangoes, all depending on
the consumer’s wallet and preference. The city’s street food, including
items like bhel puri and pao bhaji, has long become the stuff of urban
legend. One look at the crowd of happy eaters outside the ornate struc¬
ture of Victoria Terminus is enough to confirm the excellence of these
mouthwatering snacks. Suketu Mehta, in his book Maximum City, calls
Bombay the “city of vada-pao,” vada being a spiced dal fritter sand¬
wiched between two pieces of pao (bread). Office goers often buy this
en route to work, the way Americans pick up a doughnut and coffee.
Bombay chefs, like Bombay industrialists, are forever trying to lure cus¬
tomers by remaking, renaming, or rediscovering their offerings. Keenly
aware of the international element in the city’s transient population,
they display a global perspective on food and cuisine.

Hemant Oberoi, the executive chef at Bombay’s grande dame of
hotels, the century-old Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, is one of them. De¬
scending from the beautiful lobby and residential suites to the chef’s
domain in the belly of the hotel makes you feel like Jonah being swal¬
lowed by the whale. There is, however, nothing biblical about the way
the extensive kitchens are operated. A modern, clockwork efficiency
permeates the creative, almost manic chaos that provides the food served
in the hotel’s seven restaurants. The dominant presence is that of fish.
Seafood, including species with names like rawas, pomfret, surmai, and
bombil (the dried version of which has been called Bombay duck since
colonial times), is the prized item on Bombay’s menu.

Sitting behind a desk cluttered with paper and memorabilia, Oberoi
described the seafood craze that has given rise to thirty to forty new
restaurants in the last few years. I looked over his head at the wall.

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BOMBAY: CITY BY THE SEA

decorated with photographs of the chef with well-known faces
former U.S. president Bill Clinton and India’s former prime minister
Atal Behari Vajpayee, among them. Why, I asked him, don’t the city’s
residents and guests go for freshwater fish, the way my fellow Calcuttans
do? Apparently, they never have. But today’s seafood mania, Oberoi
pointed out, is directly related to the growing popularity of two south¬
ern cuisines, those of Kerala and Karnataka, both of which have many
delectable ways of preparing seafood. I remembered the zesty, chili-
coated fillets of ladyfish on my thali, many hundred miles away in Ban¬
galore. Interestingly, as I learned later, the economic muscle behind
the burgeoning seafood restaurants in Bombay happens to be the same
Shetty family who first made their mark on India’s restaurant scene with
a chain of eateries called Udupi, serving the vegetarian food of southern
India.

Trends aside, Bombay attracted me as a city of secrets and singularities.
Take the unique phenomenon called dabbawallahs —an army of men
who pick up meals cooked by wives and family members in suburban
homes and packed into containers (dabbas). Operating a relay system,
they transport the lunch containers by train, scooter, and bike to office
workers in the city’s commercial districts. Although the men delivering
the food are only half-literate, they have a remarkable record of accu¬
racy, vital in a country where different religious beliefs and traditions
impose a variety of dietary restrictions. The meal eaten, the dabbas are
taken back to the family home. The system has been in place since the
nineteenth century and is a marvel of low-cost efficiency.

Standing outside Bombay’s Churchgate train station at noon, I saw a
large group of dabbawallahs spilling out and continuing their journey
on waiting bicycles. Why did no such group of “lunch from home’’
purveyors exist in the other major Indian cities? Was it simply an
instance of this city’s entrepreneurial spirit—a spirit that wouldn’t be
denied, that would carve out a window of profit even in the most un-
felicitous circumstances? This didn’t seem to answer the question. The
Marwaris and the Punjabis, to mention only two groups, are noted for

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their ruthless focus on opportunity and profit. But neither Calcutta nor
Delhi, where these groups hold sway, has any dabbawallahs. Very likely,
the phenomenon is rooted in economics and geography—the huge dis¬
tances that Bombay’s suburban workers have to travel to work and the
expense of eating out. Whatever the reason for their continued exis¬
tence, the dabbawallahs of Bombay present a unique example of a food-
related trend, born to fill a need at a particular point in a society’s
evolution, and going on to be a cultural trademark, an ineradicable part
of life in Bombay.

However, I was after a much less visible community in Bombay—
the East Indians. Their numbers are few, but their cuisine distinctive.
Their ancestors inhabited the villages surrounding the city. In the six¬
teenth and early seventeenth centuries—that is, before Bombay was
handed over to the English as Catherine of Braganza’s dowry—these
villagers were converted to Catholicism by the Portuguese who had al¬
ready established a stronghold in Goa. Over time, with dwindling num¬
bers, disruption of families, intermarriage with other communities, the
East Indian Catholics of Bombay have become an endangered commu¬
nity. Fortunately, a few gifted chefs are trying to revive and popularize
their way of cooking. Like the cuisines of Goa, Mangalore, and parts of
Cochin, as well as that of the Anglo-Indians of Calcutta, East Indian
food is a product of the interchange of two religions and two races. Its
authenticity can only be preserved if people are motivated to study the
community’s history and present it to the world.

There is some disagreement as to why the community is called East
Indian. The obvious answer, offered by many, is that they are descended
from Indian Catholics who worked for the British East India Company,
Others, like Fleur D’Souza, a professor of history at Bombay’s St.
Xavier’s College, dispute that. She believes that the East Indians of
Bombay have a mixed ethnic heritage, being the product of Portuguese
liaisons with local Indians. Goa, the predominant Portuguese settlement,
had far greater numbers of these Luso-Indians. But as the British be¬
came the dominant colonial power in India, many Goanese of mixed
parentage migrated to Bombay in search of jobs and property. Being

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BOMBAY: CITY BY THE SEA

Christians, they anticipated that the British would give them preferen¬
tial treatment over Hindu and Muslim Indians. Their knowledge of one
European language, Portuguese, would also help in making the tran¬
sition to English. To the Bombay Catholics, however, these Goanese
Catholics were direct competitors. To counter the threat, the former
tried to carve out a distinctive, unmistakable identity. According to Pro¬
fessor D’Souza, they called themselves East Indians after the huge
British merchant ships called East Indiamen that regularly docked in
Bombay harbor, not after the East India Company. As evidence, she
points out that the Bombay East India Association was formed only in
1885, whereas the East India Company had been marginalized long ago
by the British government and had become totally defunct by 1857.

Fascinating as these facets of the past were, what I really wanted was
to discover the taste and ingredients of East Indian cuisine as it is today.
My first call was to Antoine Lewis, the editor of Sauuy Cookbook maga¬
zine, who agreed to meet with me two days later. Antoine’s youthful
features under a head of thick, wavy hair belie his experience and
knowledge as a food writer. He described the two distinctive aspects of
this cuisine—the artful variety of sweets and desserts and the use of
“bottle masala.” I was taken aback. Masala (as spices are collectively and
individually called in India) was always bottled, wasn’t it? How else
would it keep its flavor? But no, that was not what he meant. East Indian
bottle masala is a combination of many spices, sun-dried, roasted, pow¬
dered, and bottled. The masala makers tend to live in Bombay’s Bandra
area and each family has its own individual formulation. The year’s sup¬
ply is prepared in April, the hottest, driest time of year.

I cast a retrospective eye over three Indian cuisines, geographically
close to each other—Gujarati, Goanese, and Bombay East Indian. They
had many ingredients in common, yet each had its own way of applying
them. In Gujarat, too, the annual grinding and bottling of spices takes
place in April, but each spice is kept in its own separate container, al¬
lowing the cook to make up whatever combination is required. In Goa,
spices may be ground together, but they are always ground fresh, prior to
cooking, instead of being preground and preserved. And it seems the

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East Indian has a third way, preferring prepackaged combinations.
Whatever the spice formula, East Indian food is never stinging hot like
some chili-laden dishes from Goa or the southern states; it is subtly fla¬
vorful, the spiciness mitigated by a strong European influence. Once
purchased, the particular combination in the spice bottle determines the
taste of widely diverse food, from fish to meat to a simple summer treat
like tart, raw slices of green mango.

Antoine and I went for lunch to the Konkan Cafe. Konkan is the
magically beautiful area through which my friend Sandip and I had
once traveled by train to Goa. It lies between the mountain range of the
Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, extending from Bombay to Manga¬
lore, the port city of Karnataka whose food I had tasted with Ajith Sal¬
dana in Bangalore. Right below is another narrow strip of land, which
is the state of Kerala. The sea and the mountains have nurtured the dif¬
ferent communities of the Konkan region, including the East Indians.

Although the Konkan Cafe serves several different cuisines, the chef,
Ananda Solomon, specializes in East Indian food. Ignoring the printed
menu, he made up a meal for us that considerably extended my gastro¬
nomic horizon. The equivalent of the American roll and butter appeared
as soon as we sat down—crisp, light-as-air rice pappadams with three dif¬
ferent chutneys. One of these consisted of bitter melon, coconut, and
dark palm sugar. Sampling it, I found that the bitterness had been amaz¬
ingly transformed into a taste that was neither sweet, nor overly salty, but
indescribable, like the Japanese umami. Then came two appetizers: clams
cooked with coconut, and chicken pieces with a fragrant spice coating,
most probably the trademark bottle masala. I could make out only a few
of the spices—garlic, black pepper, and cardamom—but I marveled at the
coexistence of subtlety and heat. For entrees, we had Bombay’s glory,
rawas fish, steamed inside a banana leaf with a different set of intriguing
spices, a bowl of sambhar (yellow lentil stew), and a chicken stew with
coconut milk and saffron. All were served with rice. But it was a drink
called solkadi which appeared toward the end of the meal at Antoine’s
suggestion, that was the real eye-opener. Coconut milk (yes, the ubiqui¬
tous coconut of coastal India) had been blended with the sour fruit called

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BOMBAY: CITY BY THE SEA

kokum, which grows in the rain forests of the Western Ghats. The color
was mauve, the texture light yet emollient. This was the Konkan equiva¬
lent of the northern Indian lassi.

Reeling from the effects of the meal, Antoine and I strolled out into
the lambent sunshine of Bombay’s winter. What I really needed was to sit
down over a cup of tea and slowly digest my lunch. But I also wanted to
meet a friend of Antoine’s, the journalist and food columnist, Vikram
Doctor. When Antoine put away his cell phone to say that Vikram had
agreed to meet us, I didn’t bother to ask where. We got into a cab and
Antoine gave some directions to the driver. A short ride later, we got out
in front of an office building near Churchgate station, from which I had
seen the dabbawallahs pouring out. As I followed Antoine up the shallow
steps into a large, undistinguished building, my eyes fell on the sign over
the entrance. I could hardly believe my eyes. It said Tea Centre.

Over the years, one of my biggest disappointments in India has been
the difficulty of finding a decent cup of tea in cafes and restaurants.
Even in posh hotels, tea bags rule. The glorious first- and-second-flush
Darjeeling teas—the pride of India—are more likely to be found in the
boutique tea shops of the West or the homes of wealthy tea estate own¬
ers and their friends. The average Indian seems content with strong
black tea, lacking in flavor and bouquet. Even the much-touted blends
sold by big tea companies are disappointing. Lately, the increasing pop¬
ularity of sophisticated blends of coffee has given birth to a host of cof¬
fee shops a la Starbucks for the young and the trendy, signaling a further
decline in the republic of tea. So when I walked into the unassuming,
Miss Marple—style interior of the Tea Centre, my expectations were
minimal.

Opened in the 1950s by the Indian Tea Board, the Tea Centre is
now privately owned. Its menu includes strange and exotic blends like
Hot Buttered Apple Tea (recommended by Vikram), Thai Chai, Rose
Petal Tea, Yogic Assam, and even Mango Chai (iced). But the regular va¬
rieties, such as Darjeeling, Assam, and Nilgiri, were also on offer. I or¬
dered a pot of Darjeeling and was pleasantly surprised by the flavor and
the taste.

EATING INDIA

193

Sipping the tea, I listened to Vikram tell me about the latest food
books, about the growing sophistication of the readership in India,
about restaurants run in central Bombay (where the British built their
cotton mills) by upper- and lower-caste migrants to the city. The ones
run by lower-caste owners specialize in serving meat, particularly offal.
Chopped intestines, spleen, kidneys, testicles—all are made into spicy
delectables. If the tongue or the stomach quails at the thought of such a
plateful, one can try the eateries run by the migrant Brahmins. Like the
Brahmins of Bengal and unlike those of northern and southern India,
the Brahmins of the Konkan region (called Saraswat Brahmins) relish
the fish so generously provided by the Arabian Sea. Vikram seemed
much taken by one of these Brahmin establishments, where a fixed
amount of food is cooked every day. Clients are served on a first-come,
first-served basis, and when the food runs out, the waiters brusquely
turn you away. Their indifference, bordering on rudeness, sounded sim¬
ilar to that of the waiters at Boston’s legendary Durgin Park restaurant.
But the food is so good that customers keep lining up day after day, hop¬
ing to get lucky.

Vikram has a way with words. It is not for nothing that he is one of
the best food columnists in India today. But even as I listened to his
vastly entertaining stories, the fragrance of the tea evoked a different
story in the back of my mind, one about the same Catherine of Bra-
ganza whose dowry had brought Bombay under the British. Unlikely as
it sounds today, it was she who popularized tea among the British elite.
At the time of her marriage, the Portuguese court was already habitu¬
ated to the custom of drinking tea, possibly because of Portugal’s trade
links with China. Not so with the British. When Catherine arrived in
London after a long sea voyage and asked for a cup of tea to refresh her¬
self, all she got was a glass of ale! Soon after, though, as the British East
India Company began to make the most of its monopoly Catherine’s
husband had granted them on trade with the Indies, the British tea trade
began to flourish. In England, Catherine’s continued fondness for the
leaf gave it the requisite cachet for the nobility and the gentry to start to
adopt tea drinking as a mark of refinement. In India, the addiction to

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BOMBAY: CITY BY THE SEA

tea was a direct result of colonial rule. Once the British had discov¬
ered that several regions of India possessed the right altitude and climate
for tea cultivation, they carried out a systematic advertising campaign
about this new beverage, encouraging the locals with giveaway samples
until tea-drinking became widespread. A Chinese leaf thus gave birth to
an Indian habit, with the midwifery of an acquisitive trading company
that had already been responsible for reinforcing the same custom in its
native country. Which of these domains should claim tea as its authen¬
tic beverage today, especially given the waxing passion everywhere for
coffee?

I said good-bye to Vikram, rather regretful that I could not go with him
to any of the restaurants he had mentioned. But our lunch had been gar¬
gantuan and I needed to finish packing before catching a late night
flight out of Bombay.

It had been a long day under the western sun, which sets later over
the Arabian Sea than it does on the Bay of Bengal in the east. At four
in the morning, I had gone over to the southernmost tip of the Colaba
area to watch the fishing boats—stocky vessels painted in loud, tacky
colors—coming in with their catch from the sea. The day before, I had
gone there in the afternoon and suddenly found myself in the middle of
a crowd celebrating a festival in honor of Ganesh (though not the big
annual celebration of Ganesh Chaturthi), the elephant-headed god of
success and prosperity. A statue of the god in a portable clay shrine
painted gold, pink, and blue was being carried by a group of local fish¬
ermen, while a larger group of men and women danced around it, clap¬
ping and chanting to the accompaniment of drums and cymbals. Under
a banyan tree, several women distributed food, probably offerings to the
god, among which I saw puran-polis—fried whole wheat breads stuffed
with chickpea flour, coconut, brown sugar, and small quantities of sesame,
poppy seeds, and cardamom seeds. Puran-polis are a favorite throughout
the state of Maharashtra.

In the morning, though, there were no signs of these frenetic fes¬
tivities. It was time to buy and sell. Some hotels and restaurants have

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stopped buying from the Colaba fishermen because of concerns that
they may be fishing in polluted waters very close to the coastline. Those
establishments prefer to get their supplies from Ratnagiri, further up the
coast. Even so, there were plenty of takers in Colaba, as I observed. The
dawn sky was still dark as the crowd of wholesale buyers noisily jostled
and competed with one another for the best consignment at the best
price. Among them were the new dealers and suppliers (mostly dressed
in cheap but flashy Western clothes) as well as the habitues, the inheri¬
tors of Bom Bahia, whose faces were lined with insider knowledge, cyn¬
icism, and a touch of resignation. Old and new, past and present, imbued
the fishy air as the sky slowly lightened.

Late that night, as the glittering garlands of Bombay’s lights spread
out below my rising plane, I thought again about the East Indians of this
city, particularly their vividly colorful wedding feasts and Christmas
dinners as described by Michael Swamy Fernandes, a cordon bleu chef
who is partly East Indian himself and is also the author of Enduring
Flavours: In Appreciation of East Indian Cuisine. He had been out of town
during most of my stay in Bombay, but we did manage to have a brief
yet illuminating phone conversation.

For festive meals, he told me, particularly Christmas dinner. East In¬
dians, like Goans, glory in their pork vindaloo and sorpotel. Other deli¬
cacies include whole roasted suckling pig; duck indad, seasoned with
Kashmiri red chilies; mutton tope (lamb thickened with rice flakes); and
chicken moile. Fish preparations, such as stuffed pomfret and fried
mackerel, are also popular in the community. Unlike the majority of
their fellow Indians, East Indians are not strong on vegetables. But like
their Indian forebears, they avoid beef, even though Christianity has no
injunctions against eating the sacred cow. And then there are the small
delights such as fugeas, fried rolls made with dough that combines flour
with coconut milk, sugar, toddy, and a bit of cottage cheese. A basketful
of fugeas is an obligatory part of the East Indian Christmas table.

Fernandes was most nostalgic about the colorful weddings of his
childhood, when East Indians celebrated for seven days, following the
tradition of their Hindu Indian compatriots. In the villages, the women

196

BOMBAY: CITY BY THE SEA

decked themselves out in traditional clothes and jewelry, and painted their
houses with colored powders. The wedding rice was garnished with
raisins and fried onions, exactly as it was in many Hindu and Muslim
homes. And thalis full of local sweets, taken by the bride’s family to the
groom’s house, held pride of place alongside a Western-style wedding
cake. It reminded me of the tatto sent by Bengali Hindu grooms to the
bride’s house on the wedding day.

I asked Fernandes about the East Indians’ Portuguese heritage, espe¬
cially with regard to sweets, for which the Portuguese had acquired such
a reputation several centuries ago. The East Indian repertoire, he said, is
similar to that of Goa. There are endless types of boles (cakes), includ¬
ing coconut cake, a halvah made with guavas (itself a Portuguese import
from the New World), honey bread, lethri (fine rice noodles sprinkled
with coconut), newries, and of course the all-time favorite, marzipan,
called mazapao in Goa. Newries? I asked. Fernandes described the sweet
as a pastry shell containing a filling of semolina, sugar, raisins, cashew
nuts, poppy seeds, and a bit of cardamom. The stuffed shell is deep-fried
in oil until golden brown.

I tried to imagine the crisp, sweet, fragrant, richness of a newri, and
promised myself a future visit to the city on Bom Bahia, just to taste one
of these. For now, I was going to take some time out to reflect on my
varied experiences and plan a journey to Cochin, the ancient spice en¬
trepot in the western state of Kerala.

Chapter Eleven

Kerala: Rich Cuisines
OF THE Pepper Kingdom

As my plane descended into Cochin, the most famous city in Kerala, I
felt as if 1 was plunging into an ocean of green. A density of coconut,
palm, and banana trees hugs the coastline of Kerala, defining the land
as they have for millennia. Even the Bengal coastline does not look as
intensely green from above. The greenness of this western prospect
soothed my eye and reminded me of the Bengali folk belief that merely
looking at something green is good for one’s vision.

198 KERALA: RICH CUISINES OF THE PEPPER KINGDOM

The coconut tree not only outlines the coast, it can also serve as a
focal point for exploring life and food in Kerala. Like other coastal peo¬
ples in India, the inhabitants of this state have found an extraordinary
range of applications for this nurturing product that is both a fruit and
a nut. Not only is it an essential part of the diet, its fiber and flesh are
also important commercial products. Many family fortunes have been
made by buying and selling coir and copra. For an ingenious utilization
of coconuts, one only has to look at the gleaming floor of Cochin’s
Dutch Palace (built by the Portuguese, taken over by the Dutch, and
eventually handed over to the local rajahs). Although it resembles pol¬
ished black stone, it is actually made from a unique combination of
burned coconut shells, charcoal, lime, egg white, and juices extracted
from various plants.

A young woman in the lobby of my hotel handed me a coconut, its
top sliced off and a straw inserted into it—a traditional gesture of wel¬
come. Unlike in Bengal, where the young coconut is always green, in
Cochin, I noticed, it was a pale shade of saffron. It reminded me of the
interior of the ripe palms of Bengal, the ones that come into the market
in August and September, their pulp exuding a fragrance both tempting
and overpowering. When I drank, the Kerala coconut’s water had an
undertaste of salt that you don’t get in Bengal. The Arabian Sea, I
sensed, was much more of a parent to it than the Bay of Bengal to the
coconuts in my native soil. As I slowly sipped the sweet-salty water and
gazed out at the quiet streets of Cochin, I felt that the coconut was as
emblematic of this narrow strip of southwestern India as the banana leaf
was of the Bengal delta. Unexpectedly, I felt the stirrings of romance,
the romance of discovering a promised land, outlined by coconut trees
and beckoning mariners and traders from far countries to brave the per¬
ils of unknown seas.

Once I had checked in to my room and done some minimal unpacking,
I called the two people whom I had met during a previous visit—Radha
and her husband, Chandran. They had been expecting my call, and
Radha asked me to meet her early the next morning so that we could

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both go to the Krishna temple near her house. She was a devout Hindu,
belonging to the Nair (warrior) caste and a daily morning visit to the
temple was part of her life.

As soon as we walked in through the temple gates, I saw the coconut
in an extraordinary demonstration of “rendition.” Rows of coconut
halves—a pleasing contrast of husky brown shell and creamy white
flesh—were being used as votive lamps, the cotton wicks burning mer¬
rily in a little bit of oil poured into the shell and continuously replen¬
ished by the coconut’s own supply of oil.

The pillared, flat-roofed structure of the temple with its open court¬
yard was very different from the Bengali temples I was used to, with their
cupolas sheltering the deity in a dark center. This small Hindu temple in
Cochin aroused memories of the elaborate Hathee Singh Jain temple I
had visited in the Gujarati city of Ahmedabad. As we neared the shrine
where the priest was chanting Sanskrit mantras and making floral offer¬
ings to the image of Krishna, Radha and her aunt, who was visiting from
Bangkok, folded their hands and prayed silently. My eyes, however, were
riveted by the masses of bananas laid out as offerings—the many varieties
of bananas that Kerala is justly proud of

We left after circumambulating the temple courtyard. It was a very
different experience from that of Amritsar, where the huge crowd had
impressed me with its discipline. In this neighborhood temple, there were
only a few visitors, though their devotion was as evident as in Amritsar.
Men dressed in suits and ties, obviously on their way to work, entered,
took off their shoes, made offerings, and prayed. Before leaving, some of
them prostrated themselves flat on the ground, quite uncaring as to what
the act might do to their office garb. Before leaving, each person was
handed a small leaf containing his or her share of the temple offering,
mostly bananas. Sweets—the Golden Temple’s rich, ghee-laden halvah, or
the soft chhana sandesh found at the Kalighat temple in Calcutta, or even
the spun-sugar batashas distributed in many northern Indian temples—
were noticeably absent. The South, I was reminded, has less of a sweet
tooth than the rest of the country; even the Southern gods don’t seem to
mind the absence of man-made sweets in their offerings.

200 KERALA: RICH CUISINES OF THE PEPPER KINGDOM

For a small state, Kerala has a wealth of legends, as Radha reminded
me while we strolled back from the temple. Its mythical origins are
connected to Parasuram, a quasi-god supposed to be an avatar (incarna¬
tion in human form) of Vishnu, the second of the Hindu trinity. In the
Mahabharata, he is a tormented figure, condemned to behead his mother
(who was overcome with desire for another man) on his father’s orders
and, later, forced to avenge his father, killed by some princes of the war¬
rior caste. His revenge consisted of ridding the world of all members of
this caste. He finally desisted from slaughter, at the request of his grand¬
father, and undertook arduous penance to appease gods and Brahmins,
after which he retired to a monastic existence in a high mountainous
region. In Kerala, however, the story goes that after completing his
penance, Parasuram was given a piece of land, fertile and beautiful, by
the god of the ocean and the goddess of the earth. He invited Brahmins
from other parts of India to bless the land, take up residence there, and
see to it that future residents obeyed the rules of gods and men. That
beautiful and fertile piece of land is supposed to be Kerala.

The residential area where Radha and her family live has a hushed
quietness that evokes a much older time. Its houses sit behind old brick
walls, their red tiled roofs peeping out from densely growing coconut
trees and banana plants that provide fruit and shade. When the two of us
came back to the house, Chandran and his mother were waiting to have
breakfast with us. Radha bustled around in the kitchen, getting the food
ready with the help of her maid. I asked Chandran about his two daugh¬
ters and learned that neither lived in Cochin. Both are in the software
business, one working in Bangalore, the other in Boston.

The most prominent thing that appeared on the table that morning
was a large bowl of bananas. But these were more like plantains, not
very sweet, their texture a bit more chewy. They had been steamed,
peeled, and cut into pieces before serving. With my first bite, as with my
first sip of the coconut water, I tasted a faint trace of salt—from the Ara¬
bian Sea that impregnated the coastal area. The next unusual thing was
a white cylindrical item called puttu, a combination of rice flour and
ground coconut steamed in a bamboo steamer. This, as I was told, was

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a versatile dish, as amenable to being eaten with milk and ripe bananas
(like a breakfast cereal) as with a spicy fish curry or vegetable stew.
There were also idlis (steamed rice cakes) that we ate with a sauce made
from peanuts and spices that Radha’s maid had ground up together and
blended with sesame oil. It was an unfamiliar taste but, the more I ate,
the more I liked it. Radha laughed at the surprise on my face and said
she would take me to a store later where a packaged version was avail¬
able. I could take it back to America, and blend it with sesame oil to
make a dipping sauce for fried items.

‘T wish you had come a little later,” she said as we drank our tea.
“Then you could have seen the Pooram festival when elephants, wearing
rich decorations, are brought in. The images of the gods are put on their
backs and paraded around town. It is beautiful.”

I nodded regretfully. I knew I was also going to miss the other ma¬
jor event of the Kerala year, the weeklong harvest festival of Onam,
which takes place in late August and early September. Every state and
community with rural roots has a harvest festival. In Bengal, it is called
Nabanno, literally “new rice.” Unheated milk, palm sugar, pieces of sug¬
arcane, and small bananas are combined with uncooked, newly harvested
rice and offered to the gods. Afterward, the rice is cooked with milk and
palm sugar to make a rich pudding that the families share with each
other. In the South, the eastern state of Tamil Nadu has a notable har¬
vest festival called Pongal, which is celebrated by eating a khichuri-like
concoction of rice, moong beans, and ghee, spiced with ground black
pepper, kari leaves, red chilies, and cumin seeds. There is also a sweet
version of the dish called shakkarpongal, made with rice, milk, moong
beans, sugar, coconut chips, raisins, and ghee.

In Kerala, the harvesting process and the celebratory foods are rooted
in another ancient legend, the story of King Mahabali, who grew so pow¬
erful that even the gods and demons became concerned about his power.
They all prayed to the god Vishnu and asked him to take measures to rein
in Mahabali. The king was not only brave and powerful, he also prided
himself on his charity. So Vishnu took the form of a midget and appeared
in his court, asking for a boon. The king was magnanimous. “Name it

202 KERALA: RICH CUISINES OF THE PEPPER KINGDOM

and it shall be yours,” he told the midget, who then asked for enough land
to cover three of his own footsteps. The king laughed uproariously and
granted this small request. Instantly, the midget was transformed into the
great god Vishnu. With one step he covered the sky, with the other the
earth, and the third he placed on Mahabali’s head, pushing him down to
the underworld. At this, the king cried out, begging forgiveness for his past
arrogance. His people, too, wailed at the prospect of losing a king who,
whatever his intimidating displays of prowess, had looked after them.
Vishnu relented and said that, once a year, Mahabali would be allowed to
return from the nether regions and stay with his people for a week. That,
said Radha, is the week of Onam. I was reminded of the classical Roman
myth of the harvest goddess Ceres (Demeter in Greece) whose daughter
was carried off by Pluto, god of the underworld. But Ceres was more for¬
tunate than the people of Kerala. Since her daughter Proserpina had eaten
only six seeds of pomegranate during her stay in Pluto’s realm, she was al¬
lowed to come back to earth for six months every year.

Cochin and its commercial center of Ernakulam extend over a wide¬
spread area consisting of mainland, peninsula, and islands, of which only
Willingdon Island was artificially created by material dredged from
Cochin harbor. The drive from the airport takes one over the Periyar
River and provides glimpses of Kerala’s legendary backwaters. Unlike the
Mouths of the Ganges in Bengal, these backwater channels are not en¬
veloped in sinister mangrove forests, nor do man-eating tigers or other
dangerous carnivores lurk in the green shadows. For those interested in
wildlife, the place to visit is the Lake Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary near the
central Kerala town of Thekkady. Near Cochin, boating in the backwa¬
ters is a safe and unmitigated pleasure. Traveling the streets of Ernakulam,
however, means exposing oneself to all the hazards of a growing Indian
city. Unruly traffic, crowded shopping centers, multiplex office towers,
and large signs advertising tutorial and employment opportunities in the
software business add up to a very modern bustle, far removed from the
quiet, semicolonial murmurs of Radha’s residential area.

Exploring Ernakulam, I was struck by the frequency with which
churches, temples, and mosques appeared along the way. Religiosity of

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all kinds seemed to flourish hand in hand with material enterprise, a
trend that 1 had noticed in many other Indian cities. Probably in no
other country does one see so many businessmen of all economic levels
paying their daily dues to the divine before happily immersing them¬
selves in activities of questionable ethics or ruthless manipulation. As
the sun rose high and beat down harshly on me, I stopped at a church in
front of which a large crowd was observing some kind of ritual. Com¬
ing closer, I realized a baptism ceremony was in progress in the front
portico of the church. The priest and his assistants read the liturgy in a
language unfamiliar to me, while the mother held the baby in a huge
froth of white lace. The crowd around them probably consisted of fam¬
ily, friends, and the odd visitor like me. All the women were richly
dressed, some in colorful silks and others in the fine white Kerala cotton
saris with narrow gold borders. All wore fragrant jasmine garlands in
their shining black hair. With sweat beading my forehead, hair frizzing
in the humidity, and a sari crumpled with creases, I must have been a
sorely anomalous figure.

Still, I stood and watched the ceremony, until my eyes were suddenly
transfixed by an object I had never expected to see in a Catholic church.
Behind the priests stood a tiered brass pillar with a circle of oil lamps
burning in every tier, the kind that is a regular fixture of Hindu temples.
I had not seen one of these in any other church I had visited, whether in
Calcutta, or Bombay, or Goa, or even in the small western Bengali town
of Bandel, which boasts the earliest church in Bengal. Christianity, which
first came to Kerala sometime between a.d. 50 and 52, has obviously had
no problems adopting ritual objects from the majority faith of Hinduism.
Beyond the tiered standing lamp was a waist-high stone slab on which
shone row upon row of coconut halves, flaming wicks in the center, just
like the ones I had seen in Radha’s temple. I watched the white-robed
priest pour holy water over the infant’s head and momentarily wondered
if that, too, had been taken from the coconut.

Modern Kerala, like so many other states in India, was formed after in¬
dependence. It was officially created in 1956 by combining the regions

204 KERALA: RICH CUISINES OF THE PEPPER KINGDOM

of Malabar (north), Cochin (center), and Travancore (south). Nature
has blessed this long leaf-shaped piece of land with beauty and many
resources that drew merchants from ancient times. A state tourism
brochure proclaims; “With the Arabian Sea to the west, the Western
Ghats towering 500-2,700 meters to the east and networked by forty-
four rivers, Kerala enjoys unique geographical features that have made it
one of the most sought after tourism destinations in Asia. A long shore¬
line with serene beaches . . . lush hill stations and exotic wildlife . . .
sprawling plantations and paddy fields.” Happily, these claims are well
founded, which is one reason why tourism is the most rapidly growing
industry in Kerala. Unfortunately, some of the formerly pristine beaches
are already marked by the adverse effects of intense human activity.

If religious harmony inspired tourism, then Kerala would certainly
qualify as the prime destination within India. Three major communities—
Hindus, Christians, and Muslims, not to speak of the tiny but distinctive
Jewish minority—live side by side without a history of rancor or conflict.
While the state’s high level of literacy and education may be a current fac¬
tor behind this amity, interreligious harmony has a long and ancient his¬
tory here.

The three territories that combined to form the state roughly corre¬
spond to its three main religious communities. Here, Muslims, who are
the majority in the northern Malabar area, are called Moplahs, the mod¬
ern variant of mapillai or maha pillai, meaning “bridegroom.” They are
the descendants of Arab merchants from ancient times who married lo¬
cal women (thus becoming bridegrooms) and settled down here to bet¬
ter carry on their business. They also increased their numbers through
conversion.

The central part of the state is the bastion of Christians, originally
converted by Saint Thomas the Apostle, the one called Doubting
Thomas, who eventually moved on to proselytize in Tamil Nadu, where
he was assassinated by a Hindu priest. His grave in Mylapore (near
Madras) is still an important pilgrimage spot. Many centuries after the
apostle’s death (around a.d. 78), a fresh wave of proselytizing was spear¬
headed by Thomas Cana, a Syrian Christian merchant, who persuaded a

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fair number of his fellow Syrians to come and settle on the Malabar
Coast so that Christianity could flourish there once again. The Scrip¬
tures they read were written in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, These two
factors eventually led to the Kerala community being called Syrian
Christians. Word about their presence got around in a garbled fashion to
the courts of Europe; the Indian Christians were believed to be the sub¬
jects of the legendary king of ancient Abyssinia, Prester John. That is
why Vasco da Gama, on making his historic landfall in Calicut in 1498,
is supposed to have declared that he was looking for spices and Chris¬
tians. In the seventeenth century, the Portuguese set out to convert the
local people, especially the fisherfolk living along the coast. Their de¬
scendants have formed the community of Kerala Catholics.

The southernmost part of Kerala, which was originally the king¬
dom of Travancore, has a Hindu majority. Among them the Nambood-
iri Brahmins and the Nairs, who were originally the warrior caste, are
the elite. My friends Radha and Chandran belong to the latter group.

Each of these groups has developed a distinctive style of cooking,
but certain items—made with rice, coconut, milk, and palm sugar—are
common to all of them. As a rice-eating Bengali, I used to be proud of
the many ways we process this one cereal—steamed rice, pilaf, popped
rice, puffed rice, flattened/flaked rice, thin rice flour chapattis, and
steamed or griddle-baked sweets, also made of rice flour. Although I was
familiar with the South Indian dosas and idlis (both made from a fer¬
mented dough of rice and dal) that are now eaten all over India, I still
felt Bengal had the edge in terms of versatility. It was during my visits
to Cochin, when I tasted Kerala’s appams—those exquisite, gravid-
looking, yeasty rice flour pancakes with crisp, slightly curled up edges—
that I began to think that Bengal had a few things to learn from Kerala.
Mopping up stews and curries with appams is a pleasure that borders on
the celestial. There are several variants on the appam, each with a differ¬
ent name. One delightful item, the iddiappam, consists of thin strands
of rice flour dough, formed into little nests that are steamed and served
with coconut milk and sugar for breakfast, or with stews and soups
at dinner. The iddiappam, which became “string hoppers” in English

206 KERALA: RICH CUISINES OF THE PEPPER KINGDOM

through a peculiar colonial permutation, is also popular in Sri Lanka,
where it is often served at breakfast with a poached or fried egg in the
middle—a delightful South Asian variation on English breakfast food.
For those used to the enormous dosas—semicrisp crepes folded into a
cylindrical shape and stretching out over both sides of an average dinner
plate—commonly served in other parts of the country, the dosas of
Kerala are a surprise. They are thick, small, and soft, and can be ma¬
nipulated like a chapatti to scoop up vegetables or chutneys. The
coconut—green chili chutney, served with dosas, is however, the same
everywhere in India.

Given the rich culinary history of Kerala, I knew that the best way
to learn the most would be from a professional. I managed to track
down a fellow Bengali, Nabhojit Ghosh, who is the executive chef at
Cochin’s quaint, colonial-style Taj Malabar Hotel on Willingdon Island.

I waited for him in his quiet first-floor office, where the screen saver on
the computer was a beautiful image of a cantilevered fishing net, the
kind that are called Chinese fishing nets, commonly seen in the harbor
area. It is one of the most familiar visual icons of Cochin, harking back
to an extended past that has seen a parade of nationalities—Romans,
Arabs, Phoenicians, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, French, British—avidly
pursuing the international spice trade and other business opportunities
there.

As I kept looking at the computer screen, another Kerala image, from
my earlier visit, was superimposed on it—dark outlines of fishing boats
rocking on the sparkling waters bordering Kovalam Beach, and further
away, a lone fisherman, standing in his boat and flinging his net into the
sea with a motion as richly fluid as the waves he rode. These were the im¬
ages I had taken away with me as I drove to the airport in Trivandrum,
the state capital, to catch a flight back to Bombay. Seven days earlier, I had
driven from Cochin to Trivandrum, accompanied by Radha’s husband,
Chandran, and one of his cousins. The journey, along one of India’s
national highways, had taken four hours, and we stopped for lunch at a
spacious restaurant run by the tourism department. The thali there—
so different from the one in Bangalore—was strictly vegetarian, the food

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colors more pastel than vivid. But the most intriguing item was the rice,
plump, parboiled grains with a purplish tinge, a world apart from the
fluffy, light basmati or the delicate small-grained varieties like gobindab-
hog that I had grown up eating in Bengal.

It was in Trivandrum that I met Indira, a friend of Radha and
Chandran’s. When an unexpected surgery landed me in the hospital for
a few days, Indira became an angelic presence during my incarceration.
Every day, she brought me lunch that she had cooked herself, since the
hospital staff had warned us that the food in their cafeteria was not par¬
ticularly suitable for a patient. Like Radha, Indira was a vegetarian, and
her cooking was both savory and light. Often she brought fruit to end
the meal. That was how I learned about the bananas of Kerala—varied
in shape, texture, taste, so different from the ones I had grown up eating
in Bengal or the South American ones we get in the States. It’s no won¬
der that banana chips are a common snack in Kerala. She also brought
me several bags of those. One day, there were two particularly delightful
surprises—a bowl full of pomegranate sections, gleaming ruby red, and
a mild dessert made of rice flour, ground coconut, and dark palm sugar,
all wrapped and steamed in a banana leaf I knew her only for seven
days, but when I left Trivandrum, it was as hard to say good-bye to her
as to a family member.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, but things suddenly got busy in the
kitchen,” Nabhojit Ghosh’s voice broke into my reflections.

“Not to worry. I was admiring your screen saver here.”

I watched Ghosh fold his tall body into the chair facing me. Despite
the chef’s white toque and jacket, he looked like an energetic, youthful
professor, an impression that was further confirmed as he promptly
launched into a discourse on all the cuisines of Kerala. He had spent
only a few years in Cochin, he confessed, but he had fallen in love with
all of them. One of his favorites was a Syrian Christian dish, fish moily,
which is simple, subtle, and tasty, a compulsory item at weddings and
during Christmas. Cooked in a shallow clay pot called a mann chatti,
the dish involves preparing a clove- and cinnamon-flavored sauce made
with onions, ginger, garlic, green chilies, and coconut milk (tomatoes

208 KERALA: RICH CUISINES OF THE PEPPER KINGDOM

being optional) and gently simmering pieces of whitefish in it. The final
garnish is often a pinch of ground black pepper.

In a coastal state like Kerala, it is not surprising that such ocean fish
as red snapper, gray mullet, mackerel, and black pomfret (similar to the
pompano of Florida) should figure prominently on the nonvegetarians’
plate. And as in other coastal cuisines, like those of Mangalore or Goa,
using coconut milk and ground coconut in combination with spices is a
natural way of employing what is most available. But was freshwater fish
totally absent from the kitchen? I asked Nabhojit Ghosh. He smiled at
this obvious Bengali question. Cochin being a port city, marine species
would naturally be preferred, but in places like Trichur or Kottayam, fish
is caught from the rivers and made into delicious tart preparations with
the kokum fruit or slices of green mango. In northern Kerala, green
mussels and yellow clams are popular, made into hot, spicy concoctions.

The one notable exception to the marine roster even in Cochin,
said Ghosh, was called karimeen in Malayalam (pearl spot in English), a
small pomfret-size fish caught in the state’s backwaters. Its delicate fla¬
vor is much prized, and it is served in one classic dish called meen pol-
lichathu. Pepper, chilies, turmeric, ginger, and garlic are sauteed with
onions and tomatoes until a paste is formed. This is applied liberally to
the fish, which is then wrapped in a banana leaf coated with oil. The
package is gently roasted on a shallow pan till the fish is done. Since the
process is laborious and time consuming, the dish is usually reserved for
special occasions. As is only to be expected, other seafood, such as crabs
and prawns—white, red, tiger—are eaten with great relish, cooked in
many different ways. As in Bengal, the prawns are served with their
heads. But the glorious galda chingri (king prawn) that figured in my
aunt’s wedding feast is not available in Kerala. It is a freshwater species
and limited to our eastern zone.

The Syrian Christians, the only Indian community with no food re¬
strictions, have also created a whole slew of recipes for meat including
beef, pork, duck, and chicken. Possibly the best-known dish (which also
has a vegetarian version) is a stew called ishtoo, which combines pieces
of meat with potatoes and a few other vegetables like carrots, beans, and

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green peas in a lightly seasoned broth. The cooking medium is coconut
oil, which is first flavored with whole cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves.
Onions, garlic, ginger, and green chilies are sauteed in the oil before the
pieces of meat are tossed in and fresh coconut milk added to make the
broth. Ishtoo is usually served with appams. It can be a starter at an
elaborate formal meal; it can even be eaten at breakfast.

My thoughts turned again to the days I had spent in the hospital in
Trivandrum, the doleful warnings I had received about the cafeteria
food. Surely, it was possible for even the most basic kitchen to serve ap-
pam and ishtoo? The way Ghosh was describing the taste, I felt I could
have eaten these two things every day for a week. Perhaps the hospital
cooks were all vegetarian Hindus, and even a vegetable ishtoo was not an
item they commonly made. Even Indira, I recalled, had never brought me
these items.

Among other Syrian Christian dishes there are several mouthwater¬
ing preparations. Chicken is cooked either in a spicy sauce made with
both red and green chilies, star anise, and crushed cashews, or with grated
and fried coconut. Duck is gently simmered with coconut milk, and,
most intriguing of all, chunks of beef are combined with large pieces of
coconut, fried together with spices. This last often makes its appearance
at Syrian Christian weddings. Hearing about it, I felt the usual regret of
the casual traveler about not living in a place long enough to know peo¬
ple and be invited to participate in their family celebrations. A Syrian
Christian wedding, even today, seemed to promise far better fare than the
peculiar mishmash of catered food I had seen being served at the Bengali
wedding in Calcutta. This community also has a love for hot, spicy pick¬
les. Unlike the northern Indians, who bestow their pickle-making genius
on fruits and vegetables, the Syrian Christians of Kerala transform and
preserve both beef and fish with vinegar, sesame oil, coconut oil, and fla¬
vorings such as asafetida, chilies, garlic, ginger, fenugreek, and mustard.

At this point in Ghosh’s litany, I felt I needed to hear about vege¬
tables. These, too, are cooked in a variety of savory combinations, some
of the dishes being common to all communities, Hindus, Muslims, and
Christians. Avial, one of Kerala’s signature dishes, was one I had eaten at

210 KERALA: RICH CUISINES OF THE PEPPER KINGDOM

Radha’s house for lunch one afternoon. Vegetables, including carrots,
sweet potatoes, baby cucumbers, eggplants, snake gourd, potatoes, and
drumsticks (the long, fleshy pods of the Moringa oleifera tree, given
their English name because of their appearance) are all assembled and
painstakingly cut into matchstick-size pieces. They are then boiled with
onion, salt, turmeric, and chili powder until cooked. A paste of grated
coconut, garlic, and cumin seeds is stirred in. The final touch is the ad¬
dition of coconut oil and a garnish of fresh kari leaves. While Bengal
has many mixed vegetable dishes, I had never come across one where the
oil was one of the final ingredients in cooking. The taste of avial, how¬
ever, is light, not rich and oily.

Stir-fried vegetable dishes, called thorans, are also very popular
across the state, and usually are made with a single vegetable, or even
some species of small fish. Mustard and chilies are first tossed into hot
oil for flavoring before the vegetables are added, with salt, green chilies,
and fresh kari leaves providing taste, fire, and garnish. My favorite ba¬
nana blossom often figures in a Kerala thoran. The concept is very sim¬
ilar to the Bengali chachhari, but some combinations—such as a thoran
made with bitter melon and grated coconut—seem bizarre to the Ben¬
gali palate.

Although I had already discovered that the South does not have the
same predilection for sweets that one sees in the North, or in Bengal,
I was still surprised that, except for important religious occasions like
Christmas or Easter, cakes don’t figure all that much on the Syrian
Christian menu. Like the rest of their fellow Keralites, they seem happy
to end their meals with rice puddings (payasam), confections of coconut
and palm sugar, sweet fruits such as mango, jackfruit, banana, and
pineapple, and a few oddities, for instance, palm syrup poured over ripe
bananas and mashed with yogurt.

The quiet, relatively unvisited Malabar region of northern Kerala is
the birthplace of the distinctive cuisine of the Moplahs. This includes, as
one would expect from any Muslim community, many kinds of biryanis
and pilafs, not simply combining rice with meat and chicken, but also with
many kinds of fish—a natural development of a coastal state. However,

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instead of using the long-grained basmati that is the standard for biryanis
and pilafs in northern India, Moplahs use “kaima’’ rice, a local short¬
grained variety.

One difference from the other Muslim cuisines of India is the infre¬
quency with which kebabs appear on the Moplah plate. The place of
kebabs is taken by very dry and very spicy meat (beef and lamb since
pork is forbidden to Muslims) dishes. Wedding banquets will include
biryani, meats in rich sauces, and these dry-cooked meat dishes. Among
their specialties is roast chicken made on the stovetop, instead of in a
conventional oven. The bird is stuffed with spices and a hard-boiled
egg, and slowly fried over very low heat in a deep pot. Also, wheat and
meat are combined in various ways. Wheat is coarsely ground for a por¬
ridge called aleesa. Or it is left whole, and combined with minced meat,
for a dish called kiskiya.

While the liberal use of coconut milk, oil, and grated coconut is
common to all three regions of Kerala, as is the frequent appearance of
bananas at meals, there are some exquisite dishes that are solely the prod¬
uct of the Moplah imagination. One of the best known and most deli¬
cious dishes among the Moplahs is neichoru, rice fried in ghee with
onions, cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom. It is a dish that is commonly
served on the eve of a wedding. Rice flour is made into breads called
pathiris, some thin like chapattis, some thick, some deep-fried. During
the fasting month of Ramadan, the evening’s dinner often consists of
pathiri, and meat and chicken dishes. Perhaps the most famous Moplah
dish is a dessert called mutta-mala (literally, a garland of eggs), which
also features in wedding banquets. Egg yolks are cooked in syrup until
they form long strands. They are then removed from the syrup and
spread out on a plate. An accompanying dessert, egg snow pudding, is
then made by beating the egg whites until fluffy, blending them with the
leftover syrup, and then cooking the mixture in a steamer. The soft white
confection is cut into diamonds and served with the yellow egg strands.
Once again, I wished there was a Moplah wedding I could walk into.

The food of the Hindu Nairs and Namboodiris (the latter are strict
vegetarians) in southern Kerala’s Travancore region is the mildest of all

212 KERALA: RICH CUISINES OF THE PEPPER KINGDOM

the Kerala cuisines. However, as Nabhojit Ghosh pointed out and as I
had already discovered from Radha’s table, it has an ineffable yet unfor¬
gettable delicacy of taste. Not too many vegetables grow in Kerala; most
of the ones in Cochin’s markets these days are imported from neighbor¬
ing Tamil Nadu. But the Hindu vegetarians have learned to make the
most of whatever nature has given them. At Radha’s house, I found a
simple dish made with chopped arbi (a tarolike root) so delicious that I
could have forgone all the other items. The dal she served, which was the
sambhar made with toor dal common to all of South India, did not have
the tongue-blistering heat of some Tamil versions of the dish. The curd-
rice with which we ended the meal was the same I had eaten in Banga¬
lore, but there were no pungent fried chilies to be crumbled into it.

This same savory mildness is apparent in what is called elasadya
(temple food), which is served to devotees on banana leaves. People sit
on the ground, and designated servers walk by, ladling the food onto the
leaf. Dry or fried items are served first. Then, a heaping portion of
rice—a parboiled variety with thick, reddish grains that Kerala is famed
for—is placed on the center of the leaf. A bit of dal and a bit of ghee is
poured over the top. Finally, the sambhar and vegetable dishes are served
around the rice. The auspicious aura of this vegetarian temple menu is
so strong that sometimes Hindu families will serve exactly the same
dishes on special celebratory occasions.

I told Nabhojit Ghosh I knew what he was talking about, from my
stay in the hospital at Trivandrum, because of Sister Sreeja, the young
nurse who looked after me. My first encounter with her was mildly hi¬
larious. Lying alone in bed, I had been thinking about my future travels,
when suddenly there was a knock at the door, followed by the sound of
girlish giggling.

"Who is it?” I asked.

"Sister, madam.”

"Well, come in.”

"Any bystanders, madam?”

For a moment, I was stumped. Bystanders? Who were they? What
did she mean? Then it dawned on me that perhaps she was displaying an

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acute sensitivity to my privacy. If I had friends or relatives visiting me,
she would come back later. The giggling, 1 later understood, came from
several other trainee nurses who couldn’t speak English and wanted to
vicariously participate in an encounter with the patient from America.
During the next few days. Sister Sreeja not only looked after me assidu¬
ously, she also talked to me about her parents and siblings; about the
foods she loved to cook (“Malayali food very good, madam, next time
you come to my house and 1 cook fish and prawn for you, madam”);
about her longing for her husband, an electrician who was working in
the Persian Gulf and whom she hadn’t seen in three years. A large per¬
centage of Kerala residents work in the Gulf; the money they remit
home has significantly contributed to the state’s economic health.

“But that’s terrible,” I said. “Why don’t you go and join him? Or at
least make a short visit?”

“Not possible right now, madam. But he will come back at some
point. Meanwhile, I adjust, madam, 1 adjust.”

No doubt it was to find the strength to adjust that she went when¬
ever she could to the great Padmanavaswami Temple in Trivandrum.
The day before 1 left, she made an afternoon visit and came back with a
portion of temple food for me, wrapped in a piece of banana leaf.

“Eat this, madam. You will recover fully, you’ll see.”

Faithless, but moved, 1 ate it. It was mild and delicious, just like Sis¬
ter Sreeja.

Radha was true to her word. One afternoon, she took me shopping to a
well-stocked grocery store, where I bought several packets of the spice
combination that had been blended with sesame oil for us to eat with
the breakfast idlis. Afterward, she suggested that we drop in on P. C.
Marcus, a retired professor who was a Syrian Christian and also hap¬
pened to be the father of Jacob, the young man married to Radha’s elder
daughter, Soumya.

The living room of the Marcus house was shaded with heavy curtains,
providing a welcome respite from the sun outside. The professor was sit¬
ting with a book, while his wife and one of her sisters talked to each other.

2H KERALA: RICH CUISINES OF THE PEPPER KINGDOM

As soon as we entered, they jumped up and welcomed me effusively. A
large slab of cake—rather like a Sara Lee pound cake—made its appear¬
ance along with a cool glass of lemonade. Though not very hungry, I was
dutifully trying to make my way through the cake, when Mrs. Marcus said
something in Malayalam, glancing inquiringly from me to her husband
and to Radha. Her sister also seemed to perk up at the suggestion, and
gave me a broad smile. The latter had recently visited Israel, Radha ex¬
plained, and had brought back a bottle of wine produced in Canaa, the
same ancient site where Jesus had once turned water into wine. Would I
like to taste some? I couldn't possibly say no. The bottle was brought, and
the red liquid ceremoniously poured for me. It was a bit on the sweet side
but I was only too glad to have a taste of biblical history in a twenty-first-
century version, offered to me by the followers of Doubting Thomas.

Professor Marcus reminded me of Digant Oza in Ahmedabad. Both
had cherubic smiles, were great raconteurs, and tended to burst into
laughter after each of their humorous stories. I told him about eating
appam and ishtoo in one of the restaurants supervised by Nabhojit
Ghosh, and he gave me the kind of tolerant smile that a teacher gives a
student trying very hard.

I learned that Syrian Christians were a rich community; most were
plantation owners, though their ancestors had been spice traders. It was
not uncommon for a family to have a pepper vine growing in the back¬
yard. Mrs. Marcus said she often plucked the peppercorns from the gar¬
den behind the house, to use in her cooking. I couldn’t resist sharing
with them my own unexpected encounter with this vine in the unlikely
locale of a Bengali small town—Shantiniketan, renowned for the uni¬
versity founded there by Rabindranath Tagore. Among the earliest
teachers was the great Bengali painter Nandalal Bose, whose grandson
Supratik Bose has, like me, made his home in the Boston area. I went to
Shantiniketan when Supratik also happened to be visiting and he took
me to visit his older cousin, whom he called Barda. It was a small house
with a large garden, filled with rosebushes and jasmine plants, with
clumps of coconut and palm trees in the corners. Twined around the

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215

knobbly trunk of a coconut tree, grew a vine with heart-shaped leaves
and clusters of tiny berries, ‘'Know what this is?” asked Barda. I shook
my head. “Black pepper,” he said. I had not known until then that the
pepper plant was a vine, not a bush.

Of all the spices that were traded in ancient and medieval times, the
one that was most sought after for the longest period was undoubtedly
black pepper. Piper nigrum. And for many centuries, Kerala was the
source. A medieval traveler referred to the state as the “pepper king¬
dom.” Although pepper is now extensively cultivated in several other
countries (Vietnam being the largest producer), nothing can rival the
taste and flavor of Kerala’s Tellicherry peppercorns. Emperors, artists,
writers, have all waxed eloquent about it. Sybille Bedford, in her book
A Visit to Don Otavio, describes her first meal on the long train journey
from New York to Mexico and mentions a pepper mill filled with
the “truffle-black grains of Tellicherry.” Apart from pepper, nature has
also bestowed the largesse of several other fragrant spices on Kerala—
cinnamon, cardamom, even vanilla. The verdant forests of the Western
Ghats mountain chain that borders Kerala on the east provide ideal con¬
ditions for their cultivation.

Unveiling the long history of the spice trade is a continuous pro¬
cess, The remnants of a port recently uncovered by archeologists in the
small town of Pattanam, north of Cochin, provides significant evidence
about the spice trade between India and the Roman Empire. Historians
have long speculated that the trade lasted from the first century B.c. to
the first century a.d,, although there are some indications that it might
have continued, on an irregular basis, until even the sixth and seventh
centuries. To control the pepper trade the Romans had built a port on
the southwest Malabar Coast and Roman documents of the time refer
to it as Muziris. Its location is described as being on a river. The locals
called the Roman Muziris by the name of Vanchi, and Sanskrit texts re¬
fer to ships coming there with gold and going back with pepper and
other aromatic spices. But its precise location eluded modern historians
for many years—with some speculation as to whether it might have

216 KERALA: RICH CUISINES OF THE PEPPER KINGDOM

been Craiiganore—until this recent discovery. Numerous shards of an¬
cient Mediterranean pottery and glass beads testify to the onetime Ro¬
man presence.

In the historic area of Mattancherry, home to the Jev^ish community
and Cochin’s sole surviving synagogue, the yellow^ building of the Pepper
Exchange is a reminder of the old days when a fast and furious inter¬
national trade was conducted here. Computers, monitors, telephones—
all the trappings of modern business have now been installed, but not too
many traders operate here any longer. A comparative somnolence has
overtaken the place. In the old warehouses, black pepper is still processed
and graded the traditional way. Women sift and shake it in trays so that
the smaller berries will fall out through the steel mesh, leaving the larger
ones to be graded as top quality. Near the Pepper Exchange is a row of
tiny shops where vendors display their spices in bowls and plastic bags.
Each time I went inside one to take a look, the dusty scent of a host of
spices entered my nostrils. I felt I was becoming part of two millennias’
worth of human adventure in search of a commodity that was never nec¬
essary but always desired. In the last shop, a young boy displayed a long
chain made of tiny plastic envelopes joined together. Each envelope con¬
tained a different spice, whole not ground. As an Indian, I did not find
any of them exotic. Nevertheless, I bought the chain to hang up in my
American kitchen as an evocation of a whole world of fragrance.

Although Vasco da Gama landed in Calicut, ninety-one miles northwest
of Cochin, after his epoch-making voyage in 1498, it was the Portuguese
viceroy Afonso de Albuquerque who built the first Portuguese settlement
in Cochin (Fort Cochin). The Portuguese settlers who came with him
also included five priests, since conversion was as much on the agenda as
trading in spices. Albuquerque built St. Francis Church (the first Europe¬
an church in India) in 1510. Vasco da Gama returned to India in 1524.
But he died that same year and was buried in this church. It was not till
1538 that his body was disinterred and shipped back to Lisbon.

The Portuguese realized early on that the importance of the Mal¬
abar Coast lay not only in the availability there of Indian spices, but also

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217

in the fact that it could serve as a holding point for ships bringing the
rarer nutmeg and clove from the Indonesian Spice Islands, the Moluccas.
These ships could take on the additional cargo of Kerala spices before
making the westward journey to Europe, By establishing strongholds on
both coasts of India as well as the East Indies, they succeeded admirably
in their objective of destroying the Arab monopoly on the spice trade
with Europe and Africa, For almost a century they were the undisputed
lords of the Indian Ocean trade.

Standing outside the spice shop with my purchase, I had this odd
fancy that with the right kind of vision, one could look all the way
across peninsular India from the Malabar Coast to the Coromandel
Coast, just as the Portuguese seem to have done. This is a zone that con¬
tinues to beckon the wanderer. Someday, I know, I will embark on an¬
other set of journeys simply to delve into the diversity and mystery of
the many cuisines of the South, which embrace both the radical and the
conservative. There are myths galore, some to be explored, others to be
exploded. And there are countless stories to be heard and told.

One that fascinates me is that of the Chettiyar community of Tamil
Nadu. With their voracious love of meat and rich foods, the Chettiyars
are the antithesis of the orthodox, vegetarian Brahmins that most of us
think of when Tamils are mentioned. Traditionally moneylenders, the
Chettiyars are from Sivaganga, in the heart of Tamil Nadu, about
twenty-five miles inland from the Coromandel Coast, Over time, they
migrated to different destinations, one of the supposed reasons being the
punishing hot climate of their native region. Now large populations of
Chettiyars are found in Southeast Asia (from where they have picked up
a fondness for many kinds of noodles), Burma, and some countries of
the West. Their business acumen brought them financial success even in
foreign lands, and gradually, many of them have been returning to India
and building palatial homes whose architecture evokes southern tradi¬
tions of the past, with their carved wood columns and wide courtyards.

As a wealthy community, Chettiyars have always been able to in¬
dulge in meat and fish along with a variety of tropical vegetables. What
is notable is the spicy and aromatic nature of their cooking. Generous

218 KERALA: RICH CUISINES OF THE PEPPER KINGDOM

amounts of peppercorn, cardamom, nutmeg, and green and red chilies
are used. One local favorite is varuval, a dry preparation of chicken (or
fish or even vegetables) fried with onions and spices. Another is pepper
chicken. Coconut milk also comes into play in a stew called kuzambu.
They cook crab with whole fenugreek, mustard, fennel, sliced onions,
chili powder, turmeric, and coriander. Depth and tartness are endowed
by pureed tomatoes and tamarind juice. Chickpea flour and ground co¬
conut are used to create a thick sauce. Some of the seasonings that dis¬
tinguish the fiery Chettinad cooking include kalpasi (a kind of dried
flower), Marathi mugh (a tiny fruit), sukku (dried ginger), kokum (the
same that is used so frequently in Goa and Kerala), and cinnamon from
Sri Lanka, which is subtler in flavor than the more commonly used cas¬
sia. Star anise is also occasionally used for flavoring.

I said good-bye to Radha and Chandran late in the evening of my last
day in Cochin. Earlier in the afternoon, 1 had had the pleasure of meet¬
ing Indira’s twin daughters. The girls are enrolled in law school in
Cochin, and Radha and Chandran are their de facto local guardians.
Since their dormitory is only a short bus ride away from Radha’s house,
the girls came over after classes to meet me. Over tea, banana fritters,
pappadams, and a few other homemade goodies, I reminisced with them
about the wonderful meals Indira had cooked for me during my week-
long incarceration in the hospital. They were shy and quiet, but when
they smiled, a hint of mischief lighting up their eyes, the resemblance to
their mother tugged at my heart. As darkness gathered, they went off to
catch the bus again, waving cheerily to us.

“Remember what you said to me, the last time 1 was in Kerala?” I
asked Radha.

“What did 1 say?”

“That 1 had to come back to Cochin and see you again.”

“Well, so you did.”

She held my hand and smiled at her husband, who nodded.

“This time I want to say the same thing. I have to come back.
There’s still so much to see, so much to learn, so much to taste. I’ve

EATING INDIA

219

never felt so at home in an unknown place as I have in Kerala. And it’s
because of you two. So be prepared. I’ll be back.”

I leaned out of the window as the car pulled away from the house.
In the failing light, I suddenly noticed bunches of unknown white flow¬
ers and pink bougainvilleas trailing against the walls of the houses. I re¬
membered Radha telling me that during the harvest festival of Onam,
women gather huge quantities of flowers, shred the petals, and create ex¬
tensive multicolored patterns by arranging them on the ground. It is a
work of art that lasts only a few hours or a day. But it seemed to me to
represent the renewable soul of a beautiful, fertile land.

Chapter T w e t r e

The Vanishing Jews of India

“There are only sixteen of us left, you know,” she said, and quickly
walked away from me, barefoot on the hot paved street of Cochin’s Jew
Town. 1 had seen her step out of a beautiful old house embellished with
blue panels of intricate wood carvings. Dressed in a gauzy white skirt
and a pastel printed blouse, her curly hair framing a pale face and gray
eyes, she walked rapidly, utterly oblivious of her surroundings. Some¬
thing in her manner, the air of being wrapped in an alternate reality, re¬
minded me of Wilkie Collins’s Woman in White. But this was no dark,
misty, mysterious night in cold England. It was a Saturday afternoon in
Cochin, where even the January sun is hot enough for a hat or parasol to
be desirable.

EATING INDIA

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It was also the Jewish Sabbath, The city’s synagogues were barred to
all outsiders and the shops owned by Jewish people either closed for
business, or left open—for browsing, not selling—under the kind super¬
vision of non-Jewish neighbors. On this second, brief visit to Cochin,
I had been plagued by delays and cancellations of flights out of Bombay
and arrived almost twenty-four hours later than scheduled. Saturday was
the only full day I had left. On Sunday I was to leave for Bombay again
and from there, return to Calcutta for a few days, before catching a flight
to Boston. It turned out to be the most frustrating Saturday of my trav¬
els. Not surprisingly, every attempt I made to meet with any member
of Cochin’s tiny Jewish community on such a day was in vain. Phone call
after phone call ended with the same polite refusal to talk to me on the
Sabbath. In the picturesque area known as Jew Town—no shades of the
ghetto here, despite the oddly abrasive-sounding name, which is only a
territorial identification akin to saying Chinatown—I saw people looking
out of their windows, enjoying the mild breeze on their balconies. But
nothing could convince them that talking to a stranger about their food
or customs would not flout the spirit and observance of Sabbath. Why,
I found myself thinking in despair, couldn’t I find a single nonobservant
Jewish person? And then I saw her, a beautiful apparition, but more Euro¬
pean than Indian in appearance.

“She’s one of them,” muttered a man sitting on a stool outside an
antique shop.

I went up to her and explained my mission. But she shook her head.

“No one will talk to you, not today.”

“Can I call you late in the evening? Or someone else? I only want
to learn about your ways, your food and cooking, and tell the world
about it,”

“What’s the point? We are disappearing. There are only sixteen of
us left, you know.”

“Wait,” I said, following her as she increased her pace.

She turned to look at me, an enigmatic, yet sad smile lighting those
extraordinary gray eyes, and shook her head again, as if ruefully amused
at the obduracy of a child. Then she vanished into a narrow lane, leaving

222

THE VANISHING JEWS OF INDIA

me to retrace my steps toward the exquisite Paradesi Synagogue for one
last look from outside. I remembered the descriptions of its interior I had
read in guidebooks—the hand-painted blue and white Chinese tiles on
the floor, each with a unique design, the ladies’ gallery, the hanging lamps
with beautiful Belgian glass lampshades. But all I could actually see was
the white outer wall with blue doors and windows, the eighteenth-
century clock tower built by a Jewish merchant named Ezekiel Rahabi,
and the placard commemorating the Paradesi Synagogue as a heritage
site.

The Jev/s of Cochin constitute one of several Jewish communities
of India—the other two being the Baghdadi Jews of Calcutta and the
Bene Israel of Bombay—whose numbers have indeed dwindled fast
since India gained independence in 1947. Outside these cities, they are
hardly a blip on the collective religious consciousness, which is prima¬
rily focused on Hindus and Muslims and secondarily on Buddhists,
Christians, Parsis, and Jains. For me, however, the Jews of India have
long held a peculiar fascination for two reasons. Even before I came to
the United States, I had learned that they were the only people who ob¬
served anything similar to the complex, arduous, and downright baffling
customs that governed the purity and pollution of food in our strict
Hindu Brahmin household. Later, I was intrigued by the fact that ever
since India became independent, the Jews, like the Anglo-Indians, had
chosen to migrate in large numbers to Israel, Europe, and America. This,
despite the fact that they had never been subjected to overt acts of dis¬
crimination as their fellow Jews had in Europe. As a rule, Indian Jews
had been prosperous; economic migration could not have been the mo¬
tive, either. Why then did they want to leave the land that had sheltered
them for centuries?

The answer to this particular question, I eventually discovered, lay
in the fairly recent past, in the relationship between India’s Jews and the
British. As masters of colonial manipulation, the British extended many
privileges to the Jewish community, as they did to the Anglo-Indians. It
was a way of building small but effective pools of loyal adherence in the
enormous foreign country that they ruled. However, as in the case of

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the Anglo-Indians, the growth of nationalism, the independence of In¬
dia, and the departure of the British made the Jews feel less secure about
their role and their position in the new country. Perhaps legitimately,
they felt that the mainstream Indians would resent the many preferential
deals they had received from the British, and that life would become
difficult. Immigration to Britain and other countries of the Common¬
wealth, as well as to Israel, seemed a wise option. Whether their fears
were justified or not, the dissolution of the community has also meant
the fading away of a unique culinary style, born of the melding of Mid¬
dle Eastern and regional Indian ingredients.

In Cochin, I was hoping to meet with a Jewish person, preferably
a woman and a cook, who could provide the intimate descriptions I
sought of daily meals. Seders, and holiday observances, and also give me
a sense of what it was like to belong to an almost invisible yet long¬
standing community. Having arrived from other parts of the world, Jews
had undergone some degree of assimilation in their adopted homeland
of India. But unlike Parsis or colonial Europeans, the Jewish people ad¬
hered rigidly to the well-established set of rules and rituals that gov¬
erned the way they cooked and ate. What would authenticity in food
mean for them in India?

During school and college days, my knowledge of Judaism in gen¬
eral was extremely scanty and derived solely from Western literature.
Shylock, for instance, gave me a strong awareness about facing commu¬
nal discrimination, distrust, and envy in Renaissance Europe. Isaac and
his daughter Rebecca, in Sir Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe, touched my
heart as victims of the cruel contempt with which Christians treated
Jews in medieval times. But the Holocaust, though far more recent, re¬
mained only a terrible episode, outlined starkly but without too many
details in the pages of our history texts. I had no idea about the differ¬
ences between the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim, nor did we read in
detail about Zionism or the creation of Israel, though I was aware of the
Promised Land as one enticing image from the Bible. For many in iny
generation, there were only a few occasional reminders of the existence
of this elusive, intriguing community in our city—the grand proportions

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THE VANISHING JEWS OF INDIA

of the beautiful Jewish synagogues, especially the Magen David syna¬
gogue in Calcutta, built by David Ezra in 1884; pictures of the Torah
scrolls in books; and most pleasurable of all, a visit to New Market to go
to the legendary Jewish bakery, Nahoum and Sons, founded in 1902.
Aside from a whole range of pastries, cakes, and patties (meat encased in
an envelope of flaky dough), Nahoum’s was the source of two exotic
treats—^braided challah bread, sold around the Jewish New Year (though
we were hardly aware of the event), and a plaited cheese—similar to the
one still made and eaten by Syrian Jews in America during the autumn
festival of Sukkot—^which v/e tore off in strips to eat.

Of the three main Jewish communities of India, which are settled in
Cochin, Bombay, and Calcutta, the one in Cochin seems to be the most
observant of the articles of faith. Although the Jews of Cochin have
adopted the language, clothes, and cooking style of the people of Kerala,
they have steadfastly avoided assimilation through intermarriage with
locals. The zeal with which they have sought to preserve their identity
has therefore also reinforced the prospect of their disappearance from
the place that so many generations have known as home.

They are also noted for a dual presence, being split into two groups:
Black, or Malabar, Jews; and White Jews. The woman I saw must have
belonged to the latter group, who built the Parades! (literally, from a for¬
eign country) Synagogue in 1568 on land given to them by the Hindu
king, next to his own palace. They came to India as traders and refugees
in the sixteenth century, escaping oppression from Muslim regimes in
several Middle Eastern countries as well as Christian persecution in
Spain. Since many of them were noticeably fair-skinned, the sobriquet
“White Jews” was a natural development.

The Black Jews, however, claim to be the original Jews of Kerala.
One theory is that they are part of the original Babylonian diaspora and
arrived on the western coast of India as early as the sixth century B.c.
The other is that they came after the fall of the Second Temple, to
escape persecution by the Romans. They settled in the town of
Cranganore, sixteen miles north of Cochin, and were well accepted by

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the local Indians, particularly after the fourth-century monarch, Ravi
Varma, guaranteed them a safe and undisturbed existence. The commu¬
nity prospered by engaging in trade and other activities. In the sixteenth
century, however, the arrival of the Portuguese, filled with proselytizing
zeal and steeped in the anti-Semitic prejudices of the Inquisition, bent
on exterminating the Jews even here, disrupted the security of the Black
Jews of Kerala. Uprooting themselves from Cranganore, where the Por¬
tuguese were at war with the local king, they fled to Cochin, hoping for
a quieter life. But the harassment continued. The Portuguese even de¬
stroyed the Paradesi Synagogue of the White Jews. It could be rebuilt
only in 1664, when the Dutch ousted the Portuguese and took control
of Cochin. Since the Dutch did not pursue an overt agenda of anti-
Semitism, both Black and White Jews again prospered and Cochin be¬
came a well-known center of Judaic presence in India. At one point,
there were several active synagogues in town, and all the Jewish festivals
were celebrated with much pomp and observance. In the 1950s, how¬
ever, almost the entire group of Black Jews moved to Israel. The White
Jews lingered—the Paradesi Synagogue is the only operational temple
now—but over time, they, too, have been emigrating. As a result, the
vivid multicultural fabric of this spice emporium of a city is being di¬
minished in color and richness.

While all Judaic communities in India have strictly followed the
rules of keeping kosher, the Jews of Cochin are—as I had guessed—
nearly as obsessive about their food rituals and kitchen practices as or¬
thodox Hindus. I grew up in a house where a whole slew of arcane rules
governed who or what could touch food, utensils, cooking pots, and eat¬
ing areas at different times and on different occasions. As a rebellious
teenager, I tried to flout as many of these “irrational” restrictions as I
could, precipitating loud arguments with my mother and grandmother.
What, after all, could be the justification for washing my hands simply
because they had fleetingly touched a bowl containing mashed potatoes
seasoned with chopped onions? Apparently because onions were as im¬
pure as meat in the hierarchy of foods. But the onion was part of the
vegetable kingdom, I objected. Perhaps, but since it was used mostly to

226

THE VANISHING JEWS OF INDIA

cook meat, the combination somehow tainted them. What was probably
left unsaid was the strong popular association of onions, garlic, and meat
with the “other” community of Muslims, who were considered un¬
touchable and impure for devout Hindus even a few decades ago. Then
there was the conundrum that touching a tin of uncooked rice, or even
plunging my hands into it, did not affect the cleanliness of my hands,
whereas the merest contact (aside from the act of eating) with a pot of
cooked rice required immediate ablution before one touched anything
else in the home. Questioning this stricture, I was told, was particularly
heinous. It has the weight of antiquity to support it, with Sanskrit texts
containing references to the transformation of the purity of food when
it is cooked. Collectively, these rules of cleanliness and pollution, called
bichar-achar in Bengal, have built up over centuries—part ancient scrip¬
tural injunctions, part folklore—and, ultimately, the blanket response to
all my protests was that rules were rules; they had to be followed simply
because they had been there forever. Power being in the hand of the
adults, a rebellious teenager could only fume in silence and begrudg¬
ingly comply with soap and water.

After my failed encounter with the young woman in Jew Town, I
consoled myself with a stroll through the streets of the quarter. The af¬
ternoon had lengthened by then and people were waking up from their
siestas and coming out of their houses. Suddenly, a sign caught my
eye—Incy Bella: The Book Shop. Intrigued, I went into the tiny shop
and was rewarded not only with several fascinating books, but also a wo¬
ven jute shopping bag emblazoned with the name of the bookstore and
its address, Synagogue Lane, Jew Town, Cochin. How will it sound, I
wondered, when Synagogue Lane loses the living dimension of hav¬
ing devotees attending a synagogue? Later, scanning the pages of a book
on Indian Jewish identity edited by Nathan Katz, I found further con¬
firmation of my theories. The extraordinarily obsessive watchfulness
about food among the Jews of Cochin, as described by Katz, seemed to
imply that the rules of kosher had been further influenced by Hindu
orthodoxy

During Passover, for instance, the Jewish women of Cochin are so

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determined to ensure the purity of the wheat with which their matzo
(called massa in Cochin) is made that they spend hours sorting the
wheat to remove any grains that show the slightest sign of being cracked
or damaged, since polluting elements can enter through these cracks.
Once the process is completed and the wheat kept in a container, it is
absolutely forbidden for any non-Jewish person to touch the container
or even the surface on which it rests. On the appointed day, the wheat is
taken to a flour mill where the equipment, having already been cleaned
by the owner, is given a second thorough cleaning by a Jewish woman
before the wheat is processed into flour. During the week of Passover,
the Jews—who normally have friendly, social relations with their
Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Jain neighbors—take great care not to
eat anything from those households, because there is no way to ensure
that the food has not come into contact with unsanctioned items.

Aside from sacred and ritual occasions, however, the cooking and
diet of a Cochin Jewish household is not all that different from those of
people belonging to other faiths. As Sarah Cohen, the matriarch of the
community, said to me on the phone—when I did finally reach her after
sundown—cooking meat is a rarity because there is no one qualified to
do ritual slaughtering. But perhaps this is not such a terrible loss. After
hundreds of years in Kerala, and living in a hot, humid climate, the Jew¬
ish palate has evolved from its Middle Eastern roots and may well find
little burden in being limited to fish, vegetables, eggs, and the occasional
chicken. In terms of culinary techniques, the Cochin Jews have enthu¬
siastically adopted the special offerings of their land, just as they have
made Malayalam their mother tongue. In Kerala, land of spices, they lib¬
erally season their meals with hot chilies, fenugreek, kari leaves, mustard
seeds, ginger, and coriander. Fish fillets, fried dark and crisp, are coated
with chilies and enlivened with coconut-vinegar and cardamom. Or fish
is marinated in a paste of crushed herbs and cooked with small onions.
Like southern Indians all over, they love to eat yogurt in different forms,
including the curd-rice combination, tempered with dried chilies and
fresh kari leaves. The Middle East or Spain, where their ancestors once
lived, has receded far from their kitchens.

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THE VANISHING JEWS OF INDIA

The most mysterious Jewish community of India, the Bene Israel of
the state of Maharashtra (of which Bombay is the capital) were, for many
centuries, at the opposite end of the spectrum, in terms of detailed obser¬
vance of ritual and orthodoxy. Some have theorized that they are one of
the lost tribes of Israel—the tribe of Reuben—and not much was gener¬
ally known about them until the eighteenth century, although they are
supposed to have lived in India almost from the beginning of the last mil¬
lennium. Their story, like that of the Parsis, is one of flight, arrival, and
asylum; the western coast of India seems particularly likely to give rise to
such legends of origin. The Bene Israel themselves believe that their an¬
cestors were from Galilee. Fleeing the oppression of the Greek overlord,
Antiochus Epiphanes, around 175 B.C., they were shipwrecked in the
Indian Ocean. Seven men and seven women are supposed to have
survived—a human Noah’s ark with reproductive capabilities—and
found shelter in the port of Navagaon, on the Konkan coast.

Though they managed to cling to some of their religious customs and
dietary laws, by and large the Bene Israel adopted the language and cus¬
toms of their new land. As time went by and collective memory faded,
they continued to observe only the Sabbath and a few important Jewish
holidays. Unlike the entrepreneurial Jews of Cochin and Calcutta, also, the
Bene Israel remained a rural people for centuries. Most of them worked as
oil pressers, a clear identity that fit in well with the Hindu caste hierarchy.
It was only when Bombay became a thriving mercantile center under the
British, and Jewish merchants from Cochin and Calcutta gravitated to that
area in the eighteenth century, that the Bene Israel were discovered, re¬
educated in the detailed observance of the Jewish faith, and thus brought
back into the larger fold of the Indian Jewish community. They moved
out of their villages, settled in Bombay, and established several synagogues.
However, after the independence of India in 1947, they, like their fellow
Indian Jews, felt the pull of migration. Israel and the West promised
greater security for their Jewish identity. Their numbers dwindled from
24,000 in 1947, to 13,000 in 1969, to less than a thousand at present.

The history of their long cohabitation with the villagers of Maha¬
rashtra meant that the daily meals in Bene Israel homes were almost

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identical with those in Hindu households. The Bene Israel have learned
to relish the ingredients of the land—coconut milk, garam masala,
turmeric, ginger, and cumin. During important occasions like Passover,
they clean their houses, prepare matzo (though rice is not forbidden to
them) and observe all the typical Jewish traditions, but without the ob¬
sessive attention of the White Jews of Cochin.

Calcutta has been home to India’s youngest Jewish community, which
consists of people from Syria, Iran, Yemen, and Iraq. The Iraqis are the
largest group, which has led to their being referred to as Baghdadi Jews.
The founding patriarch, Shalom Obadiah Ha-Cohen, was an enterpris¬
ing merchant from Aleppo, Syria, who came to Calcutta on hearing of
the enormous business opportunities being provided by the British trad¬
ing houses. After a brief stint on India’s west coast, in the city of Surat
in Gujarat, Ha-Cohen settled down for good in Calcutta in 1798 and
began trading in diamonds, indigo, and textiles. As he prospered, family
members and friends followed him to India in search of wealth—and a
community was born. In the roughly 150 years before India’s indepen¬
dence, the Baghdadi Jews became a fixture in the city. For much of that
time, they maintained their Middle Eastern heritage, especially in dress
and language. However, as business ties with the British grew closer—
many Baghdadi Jewish fortunes were made from the same opium trade
that left Bengal with an enormous largesse of poppy seeds—the com¬
munity began to socialize with them and adopted western dress and so¬
cial customs. There was never much of an attempt to integrate socially
with the local people, Hindus or Muslims.

After returning to Calcutta from Cochin, I went to visit Ian
Zachariah, a Baghdadi Jew and well-known music critic and jazz enthusi¬
ast. His living room exhibited the pleasant clutter of a single man’s home.
Books, papers, magazines, and old vinyl records competed for space, and
the late morning sun gleamed off an enormous fluted brass speaker of
an old phonograph. When afternoon tea was served, British style, with
dainty sandwiches and pastries, a visitor could sense the lingering aura of
a leisurely, cultured past. That morning in his apartment, Zachariah and I

230

THE VANISHING JEWS OF INDIA

shared a pot of steaming hot tea as he talked about his childhood, when
the Jewish presence was far more vivid, when the synagogues were well
attended and the festivals celebrated with large family meals. From the
kitchen, where a maid was preparing his lunch, came the nose-tingling,
sneeze-making aroma of cumin, chili, and coriander. I wondered whether
she was making a typical Baghdadi Jewish dish, but could not ask. And if
I had, the answer would probably have been in the negative. The maid was
a local Bengali and was likely cooking in her own style.

When Zachariah was growing up, the daily meals at home were fairly
simple and not overly spicy. Along with rice and vegetables, the midday
meal consisted of a stew called marag (possibly derived from the Hebrew
marak, soup), made either with chicken or fish. Although it contained
onion, garlic, ginger, and other Indian spices, the seasoning was done with
a light hand. Mashed potatoes were often added to the chicken stew.
Dinner was somewhat more substantial and often included kebabs as well
as Western or Anglo-Indian items like chops and roasts. The Baghdadi
Jewish cuisine strongly reflected its Middle Eastern roots as well as Jewish
dietary laws. Even in a Westernized family like Zachariah’s, it was only
cucumber sandwiches that were served with afternoon tea; sandwiches
that contained meat were not permissible as tea was always taken with
milk. If something more substantial was required, the family produced
mahmoosa, which consists of eggs scrambled with potatoes and tomatoes.

As any immigrant community does, the Baghdadi Jews initially held
on to many of their traditional foods as they settled down and made their
fortunes in Calcutta. But the strong flavors of India could not be kept at
bay. Stuffed tomatoes, eggplant, and cabbage leaves were accompanied by a
vegetable stew called khatta (the Hindi word for “sour”), which combined
items like okra and potatoes in a sauce flavored with lemon and sugar. This
inclination for a sweet-and-sour taste, which also characterized many
dishes of the imperial Mughal kitchen, can be observed throughout the
Middle East. But in Indian Jewish homes, the taste was enhanced with the
addition of such spices as turmeric, ginger, chili, or coriander.

Zachariah’s eyes lit up when he described tiny meat-filled dump¬
lings called kooba that were added to soups and stews, including khatta.

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A variant of the Middle Eastern kibbe, the dumplings were labor inten¬
sive. Ground rice and meat were blended together and formed into tiny
balls. These were then hollowed out and spiced meat added as a filling
before the dumplings were deep-fried.

But did the mistress of a prosperous Jewish home really spend the
time laboriously making large quantities of dumplings? Ian Zachariah
gave me a mischievous smile as he shook his head. In the oblique light
of the shifting sun, I could almost trace his Middle Eastern ancestry in
his features.

“Haven’t you heard of Jewish cooks? Those legendary masters of
the kitchen whose disappearance is still being lamented by those of us
who are left in Calcutta?”

I confessed that I had not. It appears the Jewish cooks of Calcutta are
one of India’s many conundrums. The current political tensions in the
Middle East, as well as the prevailing view in the West, underline distance
and hostility between Muslims and Jews. In India, however, it has always
been the tensions between Hindus and Muslims that have torn the social
fabric apart. The minorities have dealt well with each other. In the pros¬
perous Calcutta homes of the Baghdadi Jews, the “Jewish cooks” were ac¬
tually Muslims from an area in southern Bengal called Midnapore. Their
nimble fingers made heaps of tiny dumplings, and garnished the soups and
stews with them. With their ancestral knowledge, they also produced
lavish pilafs and biryanis—including those in which fish, not meat, was
layered with potatoes and rice—for celebratory meals. To cater to the An¬
glicized tastes of their employers and British or European guests, these
cooks also learned to make Western-style roasts and puddings. Most mem¬
orably, they followed the instructions of the Jewish ladies of the house, and
went on to create inimitable dishes like chitarnee and, of course, that leg¬
endary item of Baghdadi Jewish cuisine, aloo makalla.

A simple translation of aloo makalla would be “fried potatoes.” Yet,
what a world of difference there is between the average French fry and
aloo makalla. The latter is now an endangered pleasure, as so few are left
who know how to make it. The only hope for its survival lies with the
Baghdadi Jewish diaspora in the West and in Israel who might still be

232

THE VANISHING JEWS OF INDIA

making it to celebrate Sabbath, as their ancestors in Calcutta used to do.
According to Ian Zachariah, the potatoes for aloo makalla were usually
grown in northern India’s Dehra Dun region, as renowned for its spuds
as is Idaho in the United States. Culinary aesthetics required that the
potatoes be of the same size, and the cooks often pared the larger ones
down to match the smaller. The peeled potatoes were first dropped into
a large pot of boiling salted water and cooked for five minutes. After be¬
ing drained and cooled, they were pierced all over with a fork, placed in
a pot and covered with oil (to produce a pareve dish—neither meat nor
dairy—the Baghdadi Jews favored peanut or sesame oil as their cooking
medium instead of the clarified butter that Indians generally love). The
potatoes were then cooked, immersed in oil, over medium-low heat for
a couple of hours. By then, the exterior would take on a pale golden
tone. Just before serving, the heat was turned up, and the potatoes fried
until the crust turned a crisp golden brown. Simple as it seems, only the
expert cook, with a fine calibration of timing and temperature, could
produce the ideal aloo makalla—crispy brown on the outside, soft and
tenderly white on the inside. In fact, so crusty was the exterior, that an
intital attempt to pierce it with a dinner fork often failed, making the
potatoes jump. That is why they were often jokingly referred to as
“jumping potatoes.” Served usually with roasted, stuffed chicken called
hashwa, these potatoes always made the festive or Sabbath meal some¬
thing to anticipate with relish.

Zachariah’s other favorite, chitarnee, is a chicken dish that embodies
the union of the Middle East and India. Its sweet-and-sour taste is
achieved through the combination of tamarind and sugar. Onions are
lavishly used to form the base of the sauce and supplemented with typi¬
cal Indian spices such as ginger, turmeric, cumin, coriander, garlic, and
cardamom. Tomatoes and chili powder add piquancy and color. Chicken
was also made into a stew called hamin (common in the Middle East, but
usually made with beef and flavored with allspice, cinnamon, and saffron)
and gazar meetha, in which the sauce was enhanced with grated carrots.

As delicious as these dishes sound, the predominance of chicken and
fish (in stews and dumplings, as well as unusual pilafs) in the diet of the

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Baghdadi Jews is a poignant indication of a group whose choice of food
was affected both by a slow attrition of their numbers and the require¬
ments of their faith. Beef or lamb was replaced by chicken in many in¬
stances, including that of kooba dumplings, which required minced meat
because, for many years, there was no butcher who was qualified to rit¬
ually slaughter the larger animals. It was the same problem that Sarah
Cohen had mentioned in Cochin. Several decades ago, the wealthiest
families would fly in a butcher from Bombay to do the slaughtering for
important festive meals, but now even that has become a rarity. The
Jewish table in Calcutta and elsewhere has been shaped by many such
small adjustments. The Muslims known as “Jewish cooks” were trained
to keep kosher and make necessary innovations. Aside from not using
any butter or ghee in cooking meat, they also avoided marinating it in
yogurt or cream. Instead, coconut milk was added to increase flavor and
tenderness. In shopping for fish from the plentiful markets of Calcutta,
they had to make sure not to buy any fish without scales as well as the
prawns and shrimp that the Bengalis around them enjoyed with gusto.

As my conversation with Zachariah lengthened from morning to
early afternoon and the sunlight receded to the other side of the build¬
ing, I was touched with the unspoken melancholy of all groups that are
forced to confront the prospect of their own extinction. Under his
cheerful equanimity, someone like Zachariah had to be living with a
constant and growing sense of loss. How much harder it must be, I
thought, for the elderly members of Calcutta’s Jewish community—now
numbering only thirty—who had lived long enough to remember the
vibrancy of the past, and contrast it with the inevitability of future de¬
mise. How did it feel to be part of a group that had almost vanished, to
be surrounded by people who hardly knew anything about your tradi¬
tions or your heritage, to count on your fingers those who still did,
to chalk up each obituary as a further erasure of communal identity?
Surely, each Jewish person still left in the city must wonder who would
outlast the others, which year would see the final celebration of Passover
and the last Seder laid out on a Calcutta table.

chapter Thirteen

The Indigenous Pot

Pondering the fate of lost tribes and less visible communities inevitably
makes me think of India’s own native tribes. Like indigenous people in
many countries, they tend to hover distantly on the edges of mainstream
consciousness unless economic need or conflict of interest brings them
face-to-face with the “outsiders” who have infiltrated the land and cre¬
ated industrial or agricultural societies. Even as tribal people have
sought work in the tea estates of Bengal and Assam or the coal mines
of Bihar and Bengal, they have striven to maintain their separate ethnic
identities and unique cultures. This does not mean there is perpetual
hostility between the mainstream and the tribes. Historically, there have
been occasions when the tribal people cooperated with their neighbors

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in a time of need. The royal families of Rajasthan, for instance, are
known to have asked the local Bhil tribesmen for help during their bat¬
tles against the encroaching Muslim conquerors.

Numerous indigenous groups are scattered throughout the country.
According to the 2001 census, tribal people make up 8 percent of the
nation’s population. The greatest concentration is probably in the state
of Madhya Pradesh, home of the Bastar tribe. The area known as Chota
Nagpur spills over from Madhya Pradesh into the state of Bihar and is
populated by such tribes as the Oraons, Mundas, and Santhals. On the
eastern side of Bihar, my home state of West Bengal has the eponymous
zone of Santhal Pargana, where there are significant concentrations of
Santhal tribes. East and north of Bengal stretch the seven states col¬
lectively referred to as the Northeast—the domain of a different set
of tribes whose ways of life and food have been influenced by Bengal,
Southeast Asia, and Tibet. Language, social organization, religious affili¬
ation, and self-identification are the usual criteria for identifying tribes
in India.

Many food terms in modern Indian languages can trace their ances¬
try back to the dialects of the tribal people, who might have adopted
them from ancient travelers from other parts of the globe. A particularly
interesting example is the word for coconut— narikela, or nariyal —
which, experts believe, entered the ancient tribal dialects from Southeast
Asia and then passed into Sanskrit and later, modern Indian languages
like Bengali and Hindi. This idea ties in with the theory espoused by
many botanists that the coconut originated in the Melanesian area of
the Pacific, from where it was taken, in prehistoric times, to Asia. The
term niu, ngai, or niyor, writes the eminent food historian K. T. Achaya,
signifying essence or oil, was combined with the term kolai (nut), to de¬
scribe this “oily nut.”

Even more fascinating is the way indigenous people were named by
the Aryans who migrated into India during the late third and second
millennium B.c. The Indo-Aryan dialects they spoke later developed
into Sanskrit. The initial encounters between these pastoral and no¬
madic people and the indigenous hunting communities were probably

236

THE INDIGENOUS POT

fraught with suspicion and fear on both sides. Among the many names
the Aryans used for indigenous people, one is Nishada. According to
some historians, the term is rooted in the Sanskrit term nisha, which can
mean both “night” and the spice “turmeric.” A Nishada, according to
this theory, could be a person who eats turmeric. Subsects among the
Nishadas were called Chandalas (dog-eaters), Svanin (dog-keepers), and
Punjistha (those who hunt and trap birds). Not only do these terms im¬
ply that the indigenous people had considerable knowledge of edible
roots and rhizomes, or that dogs and fowl had been domesticated in In¬
dia before the arrival of the Aryans (the domestic chicken is descended
from a native Indian bird), it also indicates how a growing sense of su¬
periority and separateness on the part of Aryans might have led to the
categorization of dogs and chickens as impure animals, fit to be associ¬
ated with only tribal people. In modern times, urban Indians often jok¬
ingly refer to a supposed delicacy of the Naga tribes—dog meat.

In the final section of the Mahabharata, there is an unforgettable
story of how the virtuous Pandava prince, Yudhisthira, is tested on his
way to heaven. Having renounced earthly life, he sets out for the Hi¬
malayas (where the gods of the Hindu universe resided) with his four
brothers and their common wife, Draupadi. A stray dog begins to follow
them, but Yudhisthira won’t allow him to be shooed away, even though
his companions shudder at the proximity of this impure animal. Along
the way, all four of Yudhisthira’s brothers and Draupadi drop dead; each
is guilty of a particular sin and therefore unfit to enter heaven. Finally,
when Yudhisthira reaches the gates of heaven, Indra, king of the gods,
welcomes him at the gate, but says he can’t come in with a dirty animal
like the dog. Yudhisthira immediately turns his back on heaven, for he
cannot possibly abandon a creature that has sought his protection. At
this point, the dog is transformed into Dharma, the god of virtue, who
says that he was only testing whether Yudhisthira’s great reputation for
virtue was deserved or not. Even in the Aryan canon, protecting the asy¬
lum seeker transcended the value of being immaculately pure.

India’s oldest epic, the Ramayatia, depicts two encounters between
Rama, a prince who was exiled to the forest due to the machinations of

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his stepmother, and members of forest tribes. The stories are meant to
indicate Rama’s exceptional greatness of heart, underlining the distance
that normally prevailed between the two communities. On seeing
Guhak, the king of the Nishadas, Rama embraces him and greets him as
a dear friend. The two had met previously when Rama, like royalty
everywhere, had gone hunting in the forest. He also accepts fruit and
milk from the hands of a woman named Shabari who belongs to the
Chandal sect, normally considered untouchable, thus flouting—or rising
above—the prevailing Hindu beliefs in the purity and pollution of food
as well as its acceptability. I read these stories as a schoolgirl; even as they
conveyed to me a sense of power and discrimination, they also made me
burn with the desire to discover what these forest dwellers ate, what se¬
crets of herbs and vegetation they had managed to unearth, what kind
of game they hunted, how they cooked it—an extensive lore that would
always be beyond my ken.

Madhya Pradesh, like Kerala, or Karnataka, is a postindependence cre¬
ation, assembled out of discrete areas once controlled by princely
rulers—the Peshawas and Holkars of Maharashtra, the Scindias of
Gwalior, and the ruling families of Ujjain (in modern Uttar Pradesh).
Geographically, however, it seems to declare an affinity for the Deccan
plateau. An enormous expanse of dark, unyielding rock and sparse
forests harks back to a remote, even prehistoric past, when this was part
of the hypothetical geological entity of Gondwanaland. Rocks, stones,
caves fill the landscape instead of emerald fields of rice or orchards
loaded with fruit. To a visitor here, the lush greenness of Bengal or Ker¬
ala seems to belong to another planet. As one gets out of the cities, lin¬
gering traces of Hindu kingdoms and Muslim palaces and mosques are
overshadowed by an even older history. The presence of the tribal peo¬
ple in this and other states remind the visitor of an era when our ances¬
tors fed themselves by hunting and gathering, when food was precious
because of its uncertain availability, when its enjoyment was primal and
visceral.

I had a vivid sense of that spirit in Bhimbetka, a short distance from

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THE INDIGENOUS POT

the tragic yet beautiful city of Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh. It
is an enormous outcropping of rocks, caves, and stone formations. Inside
the caves are extraordinary Stone Age paintings similar to those of Las-
caux in France. Hunters, armed with spears, arrows, and shields, are
shown targeting such animals as deer, bison, peacock, and rhinoceros, as
well as creatures that no longer exist in India, the giraffe and the ostrich.
They are also depicted spearing fish or trapping them in nets. Side by
side with these martial images are more domestic ones of women gath¬
ering fruit, processing food (kneading dough?) with primitive utensils,
and doing other domestic chores. Although hunting large animals for
food is no longer common, the images underline the physical and geo¬
graphical reality of places where humans have had to make the most
of nature’s erratic blessings. The hunter’s booty, seared over a primitive
fire, is the first and most authentic human cuisine. Despite the immea¬
surable distance prevailing between that food and the offerings of the
modern table, Bhimbetka reminds us of our origins, when all of us lived
off the land, when authenticity was never an issue.

Before returning to Bhopal from Bhimbetka, I made a detour to see
the twelfth-century Bhojeshwar Temple, dedicated to Shiva. The struc¬
ture was never completed, but an enormous stone linga (phallus) repre¬
senting the god, still stands, filling the viewer with awe. It is nothing like
the “cool” image of Shiva my mother had embroidered on canvas, that
serene face with the third eye and the dreadlocks. Hewn out of obdurate
rock that reflects the local geology, the Bhojeshwar Temple phallus is
nearly eight feet in height and eighteen feet in girth, and projects an ir¬
resistible sense of power. I found it hard to imagine that prayer and wor¬
ship, however fervent, would call forth any response from this emblem of
divinity. To the local people, however, the stone is alive and speaking;
more important, it demands daily nourishment. Using an ingenious sys¬
tem of ropes and pulleys, the temple devotees “feed” the phallus by pour¬
ing fresh milk, the purest of offerings, over the top.

Worshipping Shiva in his phallic form is common throughout India.
In Madhya Pradesh, the River Narmada, which has now become the
symbol of a major conflict between environmentalists, villagers, and

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the government, speaks to that connection between man and earth. In¬
numerable phallic stones (shaped by nature or by prehistoric man) have
been discovered along its banks and established in temples and shrines,
big and small. The city of Ujjain is particularly famous for its Shiva
temples.

In an interesting example of symbiosis through thousands of years
of living side by side, worshipping the phallus is common among both
Hindus and the indigenous people. There is much debate as to who did
it first, just as there is a lot of controversy over whether tribals should be
considered Hindus or not. However, it is reasonable to suppose that the
animistic beliefs of the tribal people lends itself more naturally to wor¬
shipping a phallic stone or a tree as a symbol of divine power, and that
these ideas later gradually infiltrated the Vedic Hinduism practiced by
the Aryans. In the earliest Veda, the Rig Veda, for instance, the tribals are
called, among other things, worshippers of the phallic god. The reverse
process has also taken place, and tribal people are often seen to pray at
Hindu shrines and make offerings to Hindu gods. Those living near ur¬
ban areas, and receiving some degree of education, sometimes identify
themselves as Hindus in the hopes of greater social and economic ad¬
vancement in Indian society.

In Madhya Pradesh, the geological phallic propensity and the depth
of devotion for Shiva that is prevalent among both Hindus and tribals
have given birth to a culture of temple food similar to that in the Jagan-
nath Temple in Puri. Daily offerings to Shiva, consisting of khichuri
(rice and dal cooked together) and a mixed vegetable concoction are
prepared in numerous temple kitchens and distributed among the devo¬
tees. The simplicity of preparation, which belies the delicious taste,
might well have evolved from a simpler, tribal way of life. The cooks
prepare for their tasks in the morning, after being bathed and cleansed
and wearing freshly laundered clothes, so that no touch of impurity can
defile the offerings. The vegetables are often kept whole and can be
anything that is in season—small eggplants, potatoes, flat beans, gourds.
They are combined with oil and spices, and put on wood fires in tightly
sealed pots. No stirring, mixing, frying, or uncovering of the lid during

240

THE INDIGENOUS POT

the cooking process is permitted. This allows the vegetables to release
their moisture, blend their flavors, and mingle into an explosively flavor¬
ful dish. The khichuri, too, is cooked in the same slow-pressurized way,
without any stirring, mixing, or seasoning after it has been put on the
fire. Five or six thousand years ago, a tribal woman, like the ones I saw
depicted in the Bhimbetka caves, could have prepared a pot of vegeta¬
bles the same way for her family, even if rice and dal had not yet become
part of the daily diet.

Unlike the members of the lowest rungs of the Hindu caste ladder,
tribal people in India are not technically considered “untouchables,”
though there are always small pockets of exception, as with the Chandal
sect mentioned in the Ramayana, who are still confined to the outskirts
of villages, condemned to do the kind of work others will not. But
whether they are untouchable or not, most of them have not climbed
very high on the social ladder even after half a century of independence
and the assistance available to them under affirmative action programs.
Their visibility depends on perceived need—for their labor, for votes in
a political campaign, for anthropological representation in books and
films. The commonest exchanges between tribal people and the domi¬
nant communities take place when the former come to work as servants
and laborers in homes, fields, mines and plantations. Rarely are they ap¬
proached as sources of native wisdom or for their age-old insights about
their land.

Gandhi, that maverick voice of India who campaigned ardently
against untouchability in the Hindu caste system, was also a champion
of indigenous people, to whom he gave the name Girijan (people of the
forest). In Ahmedabad, in his native state of Gujarat, he founded an in¬
stitution called Gujarat Vidyapeeth, which houses the extraordinary
Tribal Museum depicting life, food, and religion among the twenty-five
tribal communities in the state. Models of huts and villages, people and
animals, all made by tribal artists, fill the exhibition area and indicate
that over time, they have become farmers and sharecroppers by default.
Their daily activities now include milking cows, feeding calves, grinding
maize (corn) on a stone, cooking meals, and cleaning the house. One of

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the most intriguing tribal artifacts on display is an enormous food stor¬
age container made of clay and rice husks. Shaped like a fat-bellied jar
with a square lid, this indigenous refrigerator has three separate clay
chambers in which different types of cooked food can be preserved for
several days even in the heat of the Gujarati summer, when the mercury
frequently tops a hundred degrees. A similar ingenuity and adaptation to
the climate are displayed in the design of tribal huts. The Gonds, for in¬
stance, construct delightful round structures with tiny barred windows
and conical thatched roofs, whose interiors are surprisingly cool even
when fiery desert storms are raging outside.

A peep into a different part of the exhibit space reveals that despite
being tamed into an agricultural way of life, the tribes of Gujarat still
hold on to many ancient beliefs. In their pantheon, trees and forest crea¬
tures hold superhuman power and are worshipped and placated with of¬
ferings. I was not surprised to see numerous images of snakes, adorned
with vermilion paint, as part of this collection. In front of a wall of
deities, a large collection of terra-cotta horses represented an ancient
custom of sacrificing a horse when someone dies. To the Gujarati tribes,
the horse symbolizes power, energy, and stamina—all values that must
have been cherished in prehistoric and ancient times. Since they cannot
possibly kill a real horse after each death today, the terra-cotta images
are offered as substitutes.

A rich melange of religious beliefs and customs prevails among the var¬
ied tribes residing in India’s Northeast, which comprises the states of
Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland,
and Tripura. Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and even Islam have
sent out tendrils of influence here and intertwined with the original an¬
imistic beliefs. The migration of people from neighboring states has also
diluted tribal identity to a certain extent.

The landscape is significantly different from that of Madhya Pradesh
or even Gujarat. Verdant mountains and green terraces allow the liberal
growth of herbs and vegetables that can adapt to the high altitude. Bam¬
boo groves are plentiful in the area, and the bamboo shoot is both a staple

242

THE INDIGENOUS POT

and a delicacy. The enormous stretch of the Northeast includes several
microclimate zones that produce a wide array of fruits and vegetables, as
well as an exotic abundance of orchids. Among the unique products are a
basil-like herb called lengmaser and a fruit called patkia.

The one notable element in the cuisines of all the tribes, however, is
the relative absence of fats and oils. Ginger, garlic, chilies, fresh turmeric,
all are used to impart flavor and heat to food—often added just before
the pot is taken off the stove—but the taste of lipids, especially the clar¬
ified butter that is so beloved throughout northern India, is markedly
absent. An instinct for health or perhaps lack of access to these fats seems
to have prevailed among these people, keeping them agile and fit for a
life of hunting and gathering in a mountainous terrain.

The closest I came to tasting anything remotely resembling the cui¬
sine of this area was in the eastern Bangladeshi province of Sylhet,
which is contiguous with two Northeastern states, Tripura and Assam.
In pre-Partition days, when modern West Bengal, Bangladesh, and the
seven Northeastern states were all part of the Indian entity, provincial
borders existed more in the mind than on the map, allowing for a con¬
tinuous interchange of ideas and influence. In Sylhet, I discovered that
even mainstream people are very fond of a fermented fish product they
call hindol, which is made from a freshwater fish called sarpunti (sar¬
dinelike creatures harvested from lakes). These are cleaned, salted, and
laid in clay pots under a layer of mustard oil. The pot is buried for three
or four weeks, until the product reaches the right degree of fermenta¬
tion and pungency. Hindol is definitely an acquired taste, and not for the
meek of palate. But it imparts a flavor all its own to numerous vegetable
dishes and fish stews. In Tripura, I found, exactly the same product is
used, by both mainstream and tribal people, under the name of shidal.
Like Bengalis, the people of Tripura are avid rice lovers, and they will
sometimes just cook their shidal with onions and chilies, and make a
meal of it with rice. Fermented fish is a common theme in the North¬
eastern zone, and certain variants reflect the influence of Southeast Asia.
The Bodos of Assam, for instance, make extensive use of a fermented
fish sauce called napham, which is clearly a cousin of the Thai nam pla

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and the Vietnamese nuoc mam. Fish, however, is not the only fermented
item in the Northeast. The people of Meghalaya, for instance, relish fer¬
mented soybeans, with which they cook their meat.

Over the years, Bengalis have migrated and settled in Tripura and
Assam, sometimes precipitating land-related conflicts but mostly keep¬
ing their distance. One of the culinary influences of this process has
been the incorporation of dal into the Northeastern diet, which was
originally based on rice, fish, and vegetables. For their part, the Bengalis
have learned to eat some of the offerings that belong to this area, one of
which is a delicate fern called dheki shak. It is mentioned as dhekiya in
an Assamese text dating back to the seventh century. As with the hindol
of Sylhet, I learned about this edible fern from a Bangladeshi friend.
Later, when my mother and I discovered it being sold in a Calcutta mar¬
ket, we bought it to make the delicate yet mouthwatering dish that had
been described to us—dheki shak with ground mustard, shredded co¬
conut, green chilies, and tiny shrimp. It was good enough to make a
whole meal of this with rice.

The Bodos, the indigenous tribe of Assam, love meat, especially
pork, which is skewered, salted, and smoked for preservation. Portions
of this preserved meat are added to other dishes—as fermented fish
sauce is used elsewhere—to impart flavor. One of their classic prepara¬
tions combines chicken with unmilled urad dal. It is a festive item,
served during the April celebration called Rongali, which begins the
new agricultural season. In a curious parallel to a Bengali wedding rit¬
ual, newly wed Bodo brides have to make this chicken dish for their in¬
laws to display their culinary skills. Pork is also cooked and enjoyed the
same way. Along with other Assam tribes such as the Karbi, Mishing, and
Rabha, the Bodos often drink alcohol on celebratory occasions. The
commonest drink is zou, a kind of rice beer.

Among other uniquely Northeastern ingredients is tangal. Accord¬
ing to cookbook writer Hoihnu Hauzel, the Hmar tribe of Manipur and
the Garo tribe of Meghalaya are particularly fond of this alkaline extract
made by burning the trunks of dead banana trees and mixing the ashes
with water. The liquid that percolates out of the mixture is called soda

244

THE INDIGENOUS POT

by outsiders. Leafy greens cooked with this liquid are relished by these
tribes.

The Northeastern tribes that have converted to Christianity and
Buddhism primarily favor nonvegetarian food. Christianity imposes no
restrictions on the diet, and tribal Christians are therefore free to enjoy
beef and pork (and raise pigs and water buffalo themselves), as well as
chicken, goat, and fish, along with rice and vegetables. Momos, steamed
dumplings filled with minced beef, pork or chicken, are a common del¬
icacy in the northern states of the Northeast. The Hindus, depending
on which area they come from, will either limit themselves to fish or eat
both fish and goat.

The Shan tribes from Burma, who conquered the Bodo territory
and ruled as a dominant race for six hundred years, are responsible for
popularizing the use of the wok and for introducing cooking techniques
like steaming as well as preservation methods like drying and smoking.
The preference for items like bamboo shoots, fermented soybeans, and
sticky rice must also have resulted from the interaction with the inter¬
lopers from Burma and Thailand.

But all of this and much else remain far from the daily consciousness
of most Indians. The indigenous people and their kitchens are not visible
to the mainstream. Nevertheless, it is easy to see that the migration of
people from neighboring states, the arrival of Christian missionaries and
British tea planters, as well as the Thai and Burmese incursions, have all
had a significant effect on the life, faith, and food of the tribes.

The tribal people Bengalis are most familiar with are the Santhals, who
live in the large area called Santhal Pargana that lies along the western
border of Bengal and extends to neighboring Bihar. Living side by side
with the Bengalis, the Santhals have found regular employment in Ben¬
gali households and farms. The region’s writers and artists, such as Ra¬
bindranath Tagore and Jamini Roy, have been fascinated by their physical
energy, beauty, and simplicity, and by the ancient customs to which they
still adhere. As with the other tribal groups, alcohol is a regular part of
Santhal life, especially on festive occasions, accompanied by music and

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dance. They make a powerful drink from the flowers of the mahua tree,
just as the Northeastern tribes make beer from rice and millet. The alco¬
hol is not merely for human consumption; it is also offered to the tribal
gods.

In modern times, having become farmers, the Santhals and their fel¬
low tribes in this area treat rice as a sacred crop, much as the Hindu ma¬
jority does. One of their important festivals, the spring rite of sarhul
(also called baha), a celebration of the shaal tree which comes into
bloom at that time, demonstrates this. Tribal priests and shamans take
handfuls of rice and bless them. The rice is then stored for the follow¬
ing sowing season. Hunting and fishing, however, have not been totally
supplanted by agricultural activities; they remain the fallback options for
obtaining food when other supplies run low due to droughts or floods
or financial problems. The festival in honor of the shaal tree therefore
also includes special prayers to the forest gods for the welfare of animals
and birds that live in the forest. Chickens—the birds that were first do¬
mesticated by the ancient forebears of modern tribes—are sacrificed to
ensure the favor of these deities. This is a custom that sets the tribal
people apart from both Hindus and Muslims. The latter offer up cows
and goats on the occasion of Id-ul-Azha, commemorating Abraham’s
willingness to sacrifice his son to the Lord. The Hindu sects that do
practice animal sacrifice, in honor of the goddess Kali, will usually
slaughter goats. The Aryan prejudice against the domestic chicken as an
impure creature, unfit for the gods, has survived through the ages among
the Hindus, in spite of its being generally acceptable as part of the regu¬
lar diet. In the nineteenth century, for instance, the chicken was consid¬
ered a heathen bird by Hindus, not because of any association with
indigenous people, but because it was eaten by Muslims and Christians.
The birds of choice for the Hindu kitchen were the duck and a few other
game birds.

Growing up in a city like Calcutta, I had no interaction with any peo¬
ple from the tribal communities. My only knowledge was through the
occasional mention I came across in books and the rare depiction in films.
In Days and Nights in the Forest, a film by the great Indian director Satyajit

246

THE INDIGENOUS POT

Ray (based on a novel by the eminent Bengali writer Sunil Gangopad-
hyay), a group of young Bengali urbanites have a soul-stirring encounter
with some Santhal people in a forest. That such a thing could happen was
an attractive notion. Yet I fear that for many viewers, the lingering image
from that film is the tribal woman (played by Simi Garewal), her eyes, fea¬
tures, and body relaxed under the influence of the alcoholic mahua she
has consumed, holding the men spellbound with her exotic appeal.

My father went to school in the Birbhum area of Bengal, where
many of the Santhal villages are located. A few years ago, when I hap¬
pened to visit that area, I remembered some of the stories he used to tell
me, especially about attempts to persuade tribal villagers to give the
schoolboys a taste of their alcoholic drinks—attempts that never met
with success. Having heard that there was a Santhal village next to the
Hindu village I was visiting, I wandered over to take a look. The first
thing that struck me was the exquisite neatness of the place. The second
thing I noticed was the intricate, colorful patterns that had been painted
on the walls of the cottages. The patterns were unrelated to any festival
or celebration, I discovered; they were merely the expression of a spon¬
taneous, native artistry.

The village lay in the middle of the vast Bengali poppy-growing
zone where the British had once held Bengali farmers hostage to the
cultivation of this one particular crop. Indian opium continues to be
some of the best in the world, and the poppy is cultivated in different
states under government supervision. I remembered the old stories
about the British smuggling contraband opium into China, the two wars
that were fought over this narcotic, and the curious culinary by-product
that became part of the Bengali platter—the poppy seed, called posto.
Had the Santhal tribes also acquired a taste for posto? Walking through
the village with a friend who had a smattering of the Santhali language,
I came across an old man sitting in front of his cottage and mending the
holes in a woven mat while keeping an eye on his grandson, who was
playing with a baby goat under a tree.

Questioned about posto, the old man nodded vigorously. The San-
thals loved it, just as the Bengalis did. They added ground posto when

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cooking vegetables, made a tart chutney with posto and tamarind, and
ate uncooked ground posto flavored with mustard oil and green chilies,
as a starter with rice. But, he added, shaking his head, it was becoming
very expensive. I commiserated but suggested that delicious though it
was, posto was in the end nothing more than a seasoning, a condiment,
not really an important or essential part of the diet. The old man gave
me a scornful look. What do these city slickers know, he seemed to be
thinking. Posto, he told us, was indeed important; it cleansed the blood
and kept you healthy, even in old age.

I was not sure how credible this was, but 1 found the concept in¬
triguing. It echoed many other theories regarding the purification of
the blood that exist in the ancient Ayurvedic system of medicine. Posto
is considered an element that promotes strength and good looks; but
there is no mention of its blood-cleansing properties. More than a year
later, however, when I was doing some research for an article on posto,
I came across some data on the chemical content of poppy-seed oil.
I learned that it is particularly rich in unsaturated fats such as linoleic
acid, which is scientifically proven to enhance cardiac health. With a
sudden rush of recall, I saw the old Santhal man’s face again, the look of
scorn in his eyes. In this one matter, at least, he had been right, without
benefit of literacy or science. Had it been possible, I would have run
straight back to his village and asked him several more questions. Sadly,
distance, time, and lack of opportunity have kept us incommunicado,
and a veil lies between us.

chapter Fourteen

Saffron Desires

Back home in America, I spread out and peruse the large detailed map
of India that I had acquired long before I began my travels. It vividly
resurrects the aromas, tastes, colors, and revelations that India has
brought to me. Every time I see her familiar outline, broad at the top,
narrow and triangular at the bottom, I think of a song inspired by the
delirious nationalism that permeated the country in the early twentieth
century. It describes India rising from the blue depths of an ocean, or
rather, from the conflux of the three watery entities that surround her—
the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean, and the Arabian Sea. The song
happens to be the product of a Bengali imagination. But it evokes for
me a very Western image—Sandro Botticelli’s painting of the birth of

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Venus, of beauty and mystery rising from the sea. For millennia, India’s
beauty and mystery have captured the imagination of people from dis¬
tant shores and lured them to her coasts. Although much of the old
mystique may have dissipated in this age of accessible travel and over¬
flowing information, the lure is there, perpetually reincarnating itself.
And food remains a great part of it.

For a traveler like me, who was born and raised in India before mi¬
grating and settling elsewhere, the map possesses many levels of meaning
and mystery, much like the sumptuous Goanese cake bebinca, baked in
multiple overtopping layers and turned upside down to be cooled before
serving. I look east, at the region I know best, Bengal. Surrounded by
a diversity of cultures and languages and cuisines, it glows for me like a
fine gem in a setting of precious metals. Focusing on the gem in my
mind, I magnify each of its many facets—the shared meals, the rituals I
have performed or watched being performed, the festivities that marked
the year, the significant events of my life, the relationships that bound
me to them. The distant past, personal, cultural, and physical, manifests
itself in the observed map, as does the more recent remembrance of my
travels. Together, they speak to me about a country that has an incompa¬
rable genius for assimilation and regeneration, an ideal immigrant na¬
tion, just like the country I have now adopted as my own. I had set out
on a search for authenticity in food, but I have ended up as a witness to
endless synthesis.

From my beginnings in Calcutta, I trace the downward curve of the
eastern coast of Bengal. My finger pauses over the fjordlike rivulets
called the Mouths of the Ganges. Around these waters spread the great
mangrove forests of the Sunderbans, tempting men with a bounty of
honey and fish, but delivering the unwary into the terrifying jaws of the
tiger. The coconut, the palm, the banana—I imagine a wealth of leaves,
fronds, and edible fruits covering this land as I move my finger down¬
ward to the neighboring state of Orissa. This is an overwhelmingly green
coastline.

En route from Bengal to Orissa, the coast forms a gentle swell, like
the belly of a pregnant woman—pregnant with secrets, with the stirrings

250

SAFFRON DESIRES

of history, the blending and cooking of flavors. Where the belly again
merges into the body stands the legendary Sun Temple of Konark. I
pause each time my finger touches this point, for it reminds me of the fe¬
licitous connection that was once forged between settlers from a small
European country, Portugal, and the people of Bengal, allowing the latter
to discover the pleasures of sweets made with cottage cheese. In the six¬
teenth and seventeenth centuries, when the Portuguese sailed around In¬
dia’s southern tip and moved up the eastern coast, one of the landmarks
that helped them get their bearings was this temple, which they called the
Black Pagoda because of the dark color of the edifice’s stone roof. You
cannot see the same landmark anymore, even if you make the same sea
voyage. Years of encroachment by the sandy beach have shifted the tem¬
ple three miles inland, and not much of the original structure has escaped
the depredations of climate and conquest. But when it was built by King
Narasimhadeva in 1278 (possibly to celebrate a victory over a Muslim
ruler), it stood right on the coast, a massive structure in the shape of a
chariot drawn by horses, the black granite of the roof in marked contrast
with the paler stone of the body of the chariot.

The Bengali poet Tagore once wrote that, at Konark, the language
of stone has surpassed that of man. Despite the ravages of time, what re¬
mains standing on the shifting sands today is indeed breathtaking. I can
still remember being awestruck when I first saw Konark as a child of
eight. I wasn’t old enough to be fascinated by the extraordinary erotic
sculpture gracing the wind- and sand-washed stone, nor did I appreciate
the finer points of architectural design. What I saw with my child’s eye
was an image of arrested energy that has stayed with me. The artists
who created the temple sculpted seven horses of the sun, representing
the seven days of the week, eternally poised to gallop across time. The
twelve wheels of the chariot they pulled were meant to mimic the
rotation of the year. But more than horses (or lions and elephants in
the temple courtyard), it was the three statues of Surya, the sun god him¬
self, that enthralled me. Standing tall and still, each image conveys an ex¬
traordinary sense of serenity. Unlike any other god in India, however,
the sun god, I saw, was wearing knee-high boots. The same distinctive

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footwear, I learned years later, can be seen in the Surya images in other
Indian sun temples. It is an incongruity worth pondering.

Some historians speculate that Surya was derived from the Persian
god of light, Mithra or Mithras, and was therefore dressed in the Per¬
sian/West Asian style. It is an intriguing theory After all, the connection
between Persia and India does go back to ancient times, the Aryan set¬
tlers having spread out over an extensive domain from West Asia to In¬
dia. A common adoration of the sun, giver of life and food, could well
have prevailed throughout this region. In India, the ancient Hindus who
composed the Vedas expressed their reverence for the sun in the great
Gayatri Mantra, a prayer beseeching the sun to enlighten man through
his exuberant, joyful power. Later, when a newer faith, Islam, had taken
over the domains of both Mithra and Surya, a new political and eco¬
nomic connection was forged between Persia and India, thus paving the
way for the sumptuous, saffron-tinted, fruit-studded pilafs and biryanis
of the Persian culinary tradition to become part of India’s courtly Is¬
lamic cuisine. That an Indian sun god should be wearing boots in the
style of a Persian deity is not so incongruous after all; it is merely an¬
other instance of the integration of ideas from diverse sources, the same
kind of integration that has repeatedly shaped India’s food.

The Portuguese mariners who looked for the landmark of the Black
Pagoda came to explore a secondary realm of gold on the eastern side
of India, after having established themselves in Goa on the west coast.
Loaded with a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables from their colonies
in the New World and Africa, eager to reach the Spice Islands of In¬
donesia that liberally produced what India did not—nutmeg, mace, and
clove—they put up with the rigors and dangers of this extended voyage,
as the vision of prosperity beckoned them onward. The ones who set¬
tled around the Bay of Bengal could not possibly have foreseen a future
in which assimilation with Bengalis would erase their separateness to
nothing. Were it possible to revive their ghosts and tell them about
the transformation worked on Bengal’s confectionary by their unique
cheese- and sweets-making techniques, they would probably find it as
incredible as the bacterial theory of disease.

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SAFFRON DESIRES

On the map, the coast starts curving both downward and inward.
The peninsular south is taking its characteristic triangular form. But the
green remains steadfast as the monsoon currents flow across the ocean
and the warmth of the equator reaches out from below. The border of
Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu merge and flow downward to form yet
another fabled entity—the Coromandel Coast. Halfway down this coast
is the former French enclave of Pondicherry, where a curious amalgam
of East and West blossomed but remained confined within a small
boundary. The French bequeathed the baguette and the croissant to the
Tamil Indians, as well as recipes for pork, sausages, and beef ragout.
They also took advantage of the coastal bounty of fish to create poisson
capitaine, in which steamed fish is combined with garlic and mayon¬
naise. It reminds me of chicken country captain, so popular among the
Anglo-Indians of Calcutta, though the identity of the captain in both
dishes remains equally mysterious.

Shrinking inward, jutting and retreating, the Coromandel Coast fi¬
nally dips down to the southernmost point of India, Kanniyakumari or,
as the British called it. Cape Comorin. If I could stand at this point and
look up across the immensity of space and geography—with that imag¬
ined, penetrating, all-seeing vision I have so desired, the third eye of the
gods—I would focus on one of the most beautiful spots in India. Of all
the places I have never managed to visit, whose food I have never man¬
aged to sample at the source, this is the one that most occupies my
dreams. Its culinary tradition, at once royal and common, can boast a so¬
phistication comparable to that of the haute cuisines of Delhi, Lucknow,
and Hyderabad. It has been shaped by hundreds of years of human his¬
tory, by the coexistence of several communities, Buddhist, Muslim, and
Hindu, and by the unique ingredients with which nature has endowed
the region. It is a place about which a Mughal emperor reportedly said,
“If there is a heaven on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.” The beauty
and fruitfulness of this region elicited eloquent praise from Chinese and
European travelers in ancient and medieval times. In my day, however,
it has become a tragic symbol of human inadequacy. An earthly paradise,
whose beauty once conquered her conquerors, is now ravaged by war.

EATING INDIA

253

terrorism, and natural disasters. Kashmir, land of the Indian saffron, pos-*
sibly the finest saffron in the world, is a potent reminder of what we can¬
not have, despite the intensity of desire. Ever since India became
independent after Partition in 1947, the fate of Kashmir (where a Hindu
king once ruled over a Muslim people) has been fraught with conflict and
controversy, and peace has become the most elusive commodity.

The valley of Kashmir lies between the massive peaks of the Hi¬
malayas. Legend has it that originally the place was an enormous lake,
haunted by an evil demon. A holy man named Kashyap went through
a rigorous period of meditation and asceticism in order to please the
gods and asked them for the power to destroy this demon. The gods
agreed, and Kashyap blasted some mountains away with his yogic power,
drained the lake, and killed the demon. The land that lay beneath the
lake became the beautiful valley that we now see in so many picture
postcards. One of the best-known pictorial images of Kashmir is that of
houseboats floating on lakes, the Dal Lake being the most famous of
these. The lakes serve as floating vegetable gardens, the plants rooted in
fertile beds of reed and mud under water. And the houseboats are a left¬
over from the days of the British who were originally forbidden by the
king to sell their goods in Kashmir’s markets. Showing the same kind of
ingenuity that enabled them to transition from a commercial entity to
an imperial power ruling all of India, the British merchants began sell¬
ing their products from boats in the lakes. Now the British are gone, but
the people of Kashmir have adopted the custom.

I still remember a postcard sent to me by a school friend when she
visited Kashmir with her family many years ago. It is a picture of a beau¬
tiful girl dressed in a red outfit, her transparent red scarf thrown carelessly
over her hair, highlighting the blush on her cheeks. Sitting on the front
deck of her houseboat, she holds a small basket of apples on her lap, but
her eyes are not directed toward the camera. Instead, they are trained on
an invisible object or landscape in the distance. The look in her eyes is one
of intense longing. It is a longing that has found an echo in my heart.

Once, when my uncle Khokon—the same person who had intro¬
duced me to the Gujarati khandvi and dhokla—came home from America

254

SAFFRON DESIRES

for a visit, he took our family out for dinner at one of the well-known
restaurants in Calcutta. Eating out, except for sampling the occasional
street food or prohibited beef kebabs with my friends, was a major event
in those days, partly because it seemed like a waste of money. In a home
that boasted a cook like my mother, tasteful and varied meals were the
rule rather than the exception. A staunchly middle-class Bengali family
like ours would rather spend money on books, household items, or even
a vacation trip. Meals, even special or festive meals, consisted of food
cooked at home.

My uncle said he had chosen the restaurant on hearing that the chef
was from Kashmir. In the cab that took us there, he told us about the
better-known dishes of Kashmiri cuisine, the unique ingredients used in
it, including lotus root (the rhizome of the plant, found underwater),
and, most of all, the famous wazwans (wedding banquets), which can
consist of up to thirty different dishes cooked by wazas, or master chefs,
whose ancestors supposedly came from Samarkand. Rista (meatballs in
gravy), gushtaba (giant meatballs in yogurt sauce), tabak maz (crisply
fried spiced ribs), kebabs—the more names he mentioned, the more we
felt we were about to enter a fairy-tale kingdom.

For me, the mere idea of the lotus, the flower of the gods, and con¬
sidered sacred by both Hindus and Buddhists, being used as a food
source for human beings was amazing. After all, the lotus grows in Ben¬
gal, too. But though we eat the stems of the water lily, lotus roots had
never figured on our plates. Kashmiris, perhaps by virtue of their loca¬
tion near the Himalayas, the abode of the gods, are not intimidated by
this beautiful flower. They make crisp fritters out of lotus roots coated
in rice batter, or combine it with meat or fish or other vegetables to add
a succulent texture to the dish. They also use the large round leaves of
the lotus as plates, my uncle said, the way Bengalis traditionally use ba¬
nana leaves. I found the notion entrancing. The beauty of the lotus leaf
almost surpasses that of the banana leaf Its surface is matte instead of
shiny, but its wavy circular form is closer to the shape of a man-made
dinner plate. Like the banana leaf, it is also waterproof and heatproof,
ideal for holding the varied textures and consistencies of the items

EATING INDIA

255

served in an Indian meal. The natural water-repellent quality of the sur¬
face has inspired the oft-used Indian simile about the pains and pleasures
of life being as short-lived as droplets of water on a lotus leaf, and the
flower, rising tall and exquisite from the bed of clay under a pond, is a
frequent metaphor for beauty and purity unaffected by squalor and filth.

The restaurant we went to did not offer any formal thirty-course
banquet. But it did serve the most famous export from Kashmiri
cuisine—roghan josh (literally, red meat, the color originally achieved
with the addition of dried cockscombs—flowers of the Celosia cristata —
but made now with Kashmiri chilies that are strong in tint but low in
heat), a lamb preparation whose very name rolls off richly from the
tongue. We ordered it with great anticipation, along with rice pilaf and
other items such as chicken and duck. Everything was unlike anything I
had known till then. Even the duck, a preparation called shikar, cooked
with vinegar, garlic, and chilies, marched on my taste buds with a
rhythm that was foreign. But when we started on the roghan josh, the
silence that descended on our table lasted a long time. It was our first
experience with meat that had not been cooked with the inevitable
onion and garlic, and yet had a richness of taste and texture. An unfa¬
miliar, yet luscious combination of ginger, asafetida, fennel, fenugreek,
red chilies, yogurt, and ghee in the sauce opened a door to pleasures that
were later magnified with each recall. Kashmir, which until then had
been a symbol of unattainable beauty, based on what I had read and
heard, took on the added dimension of a paradise of sensory delights.
The old pictures I had seen came back, the undulating valleys and hills,
the placid lakes full of lotuses and lilies, their petals unfurling under the
sun, the beautiful girl with her basket of apples. Alexander had been
there when he was pursuing his dreams of conquering India. I won¬
dered whether it was the effect of Kashmir’s beauty on the ruthless
Macedonian that led to the adage: Alexander came and saw, but India
conquered.

A little more familiarity with the food of this distant region brought
some surprising discoveries. Despite its northern location, and a tradi¬
tional array of excellent breads, the staple food of Kashmir is rice, as it is

256

SAFFRON DESIRES

in Bengal. However, it is not the long-grained basmati that they prefer,
even for their famous pilafs, but the slightly sticky rice that grows in the
valley. Another unexpected commonality I discovered between Bengal
and Kashmir was a preference for mustard oil as a cooking medium.
Fields of yellow-flowering mustard are a common sight in the valley.
Perhaps the most striking revelation was that Kashmir’s Hindu Brahmins
had no objection to enjoying fish and meat, just like Bengali Brahmins.
In Bengal, we have grown used to being considered ‘‘lesser” observers
of Hindu orthodoxy, primarily because Bengali Brahmins have not been
able to give up the pleasures of nonvegetarian food, unlike their “purer”
brethren in northern and southern India. In a rather desperate attempt
at establishing their credentials, Bengali Brahmin scholars even made up
a rule of exclusion for themselves—fish without scales was prohibited.
Needless to say, it didn’t do much to restore status in the eyes of those
who never touched fish. The Kashmiri Brahmins had their own rule of
exclusion. They cooked their fish, lamb, chicken, and duck without the
use of onion and garlic, since these two items figure largely in the cook¬
ing of Muslims. The dual tradition of cooking that developed has only
enriched the overall tapestry of Kashmiri food. Hindus focus on asafetida,
ginger, fenugreek, and fennel, while Muslims combine onion (the ex¬
traordinarily flavorful Kashmiri shallot, called praan), garlic, ginger, and
the fragrant spices of garam masala.

The natural beauty of Kashmir is reflected in its exquisite crafts
as well as in the features of its people. In childhood, when 1 locked
horns with my mother, refusing to eat the “healthy” slices of apple she
set before me, my grandmother would try to resolve the matter with
diplomacy, declaring that eating apples would make me as pretty as a
Kashmiri girl. Somehow, I didn’t quite believe in this miraculous power
of the fruit, in spite of the pictures 1 had seen, of handsome men and
pretty, pink-cheeked women. But for the British, as well as the Mughal
rulers, Kashmir’s bounty of temperate-zone fruits—apples, apricots,
plums, peaches, pears, and most notably, grapes—magnified the desirabil¬
ity of its location. Before they created their royal orchards around Delhi
and Agra, the Mughals regularly imported these fruits from Kashmir. As

EATING INDIA

257

for grapes, Kashmiris produced a delightful fragrant wine that was en--
joyed not only by the people and nobility of the region (it was often
drunk to celebrate the year’s first snowfall) but also the imperial Muslim
rulers of Delhi, who saw no contradiction between their faith and the
bottle.

It is, however, a tiny flower, not a fruit, that most evokes Kashmir’s
magical aura of heaven on earth. Kashmir is the only place in India
where saffron is cultivated. Although the saffron crocus, called nargis in
India, is native to Greece, it entered India through Persia and was culti¬
vated in Kashmir as far back as the sixth century. Under the Mughals,
obsessed with high living and fine cuisine, labor-intensive saffron culti¬
vation flourished. According to spice experts, Kashmiri saffron is the
best in the world; its deep reddish-orange color and intense fragrance
transform any dish in which it is used. Even two or three strands can
permeate a large pot of pilaf with flavor. Unfortunately, the world
doesn’t often get to enjoy the pleasures of Kashmiri saffron. Conflict
and violence have made sustained cultivation and export difficult, and
the international market focuses mostly on saffron from Iran and Spain.
For me, this reclusive flavor, culled from the beautiful purple flowers
that carpet the valleys of Rampur and Paraspur, symbolizes a negative
aspect of eating India—our failure to make the most of what we have,
by transforming the beauty of food into the ugliness of conflict. Each
time I use my private stock of Kashmiri saffron, in an American kitchen
far from the soil where it was grown, I make a silent undertaking to
reach Kashmir some day, no matter what, and eat a meal on a lotus leaf.
I know, if I get there, that hospitality will not be wanting. As Sandip
Kachroo, a Kashmiri chef I met during my travels in South India, told
me proudly, “To us, the guest is god.”

Until then, Kashmir’s beauty, the stuff of legends and real stories,
lives in my mind, in the books I have read, in the beautiful objects made
by her craftsmen, in the exquisitely embroidered woolen shawls that
warm my shoulders with such comfort even in a frigid northern cli¬
mate. These inimitable shawls were the only renewable direct contact
we Bengalis had with Kashmir. Every winter, itinerant salesmen left

258

SAFFRON DESIRES

their home and made their way to distant Bengal to tempt people into
buying their wares. It was a centuries-old practice. Over time, the more
successful among these merchants settled in Bengali cities, opened shawl
shops, and hired a new group of salesmen to do the hard work of door-
to-door vending.

I look at the map and visualize the Calcutta neighborhoods through
which the itinerant shawl sellers moved. Throughout the short tropical
winter, they went from house to house, undid the enormous cloth bun¬
dles they toted on their back or on their head, and spread out their
shawls before the Bengali housewives. And what a sight it was, one jewel
tone after another, inscribed with the finest of stitches to form subtle
patterns.

My finger stays on Calcutta. One shawl seller made a regular stop
at a house in southern Calcutta where my husband’s widowed great¬
grandmother lived with her son Prafulla—British-trained barrister
turned freedom activist—and her three grandchildren. The house has
now been demolished to make way for an apartment complex, but I can
imagine it, a comfortable, spacious structure, though marked by signs of
neglect. Prafulla’s eldest daughter is the shadowy figure in this episode
of the family history. She had inherited her dead mother’s beauty, and
the eye of the shawl merchant—dare I think he was handsome, was he
nourished with Kashmiri apples in boyhood?—fell on her. He was a
Kashmiri Brahmin, his speech and manners evoking an elegant courtly
tradition. And they worked their charm on a susceptible girl who had
led a sheltered life. Finally, undeterred by considerations of family or so¬
cial disapproval, she left home to marry him. Not much was known of
the outcome of the marriage; it was unlikely that the distant Kashmiri
family welcomed an unconventional Bengali bride with a formal ban¬
quet of thirty dishes, the traditional wazwan. The only information that
trickled down to her family not long after was that she had died of tu¬
berculosis, bereft of the company of her immediate relatives, hundreds
of miles from home. Had she been abandoned by her beautiful Kashmiri
lover? There were whispers, but no one seemed to know for sure. All
that is left is a terse note made by her brother, my late father-in-law, in

EATING INDIA

259

the family journal: “Didi [elder sister] died on the 16^^ of July, 1937.”
She was twenty-three.

I fold up the map and put it away. It rustles with stories, joyful, incredi¬
ble, fragrant, clamorous, absurd, poignant, and downright tragic. My sto¬
ries, the world’s stories. The one thing I have learned from exploring
the realm of India’s food is that this is a civilization with an insatiable,
almost childlike curiosity. India welcomes new trends and new foods
with equal zeal; she consumes the old and the new with eager voracity.
She has taught me that authenticity is a myth, that fusion is not a mere
restaurant fad, that tradition lives because it is constantly being re¬
touched. Even the weight of several millennia’s history cannot imprison
the spirit of this land into staleness for long; dark and dismal eras do
come, but eventually the powerful Indian sun fights them off, with light
and energy.

Once again I go back to the mythical past, when India’s greatest
epic, the Mahabharata was written. There is a story of exile here, too, as
in the Ramayana, The five Pandava princes and their beautiful wife
Draupadi are doomed to spend thirteen years in the forest before they
can inherit their kingdom. Draupadi, in the role of woman and wife, is
responsible for providing food, and not only to her five husbands but
also to any guests (wanderers, royal hunters, forest-dwelling ascetics)
who might stop by. How, she wonders, can she know how much food to
prepare on any given day? The sun god, booted or not, comes to her res¬
cue. He gives her a copper pot that has the magical power to eternally
renew whatever was cooked in it, until Draupadi herself eats from it and
washes the pot.

India is the sun’s cooking pot. In our time, the process of renewal
involves modernizing certain foods, rediscovering lost cuisines and cre¬
ating a public demand for them, and also acquiring a taste for dishes
from the global platter, ranging from sophisticated French or Italian
concoctions to the mouth-tingling delights of Southeast Asia and
China, to, let’s face it, the fast-food menu of the West, which transcends
language and culture.

260

SAFFRON DESIRES

A genius for adaptation and inventiveness is best seen in the last cat¬
egory. Restaurants advertise pizza with a topping of the ubiquitous
chicken tikka masala on the one hand, and on the other, a version so
strictly devoid of onion, garlic, or anything that grows under the ground
that even observant Jains can eat it, provided they are sure it does not
bear the contamination of eggs. The world’s greatest fast-food chain,
McDonald’s, marches in and opens outlets in India’s cities, but soon
learns that it is not enough to transform the Big Mac into a chicken
burger (even lamb could be mistaken for some forbidden meat and cause
controversy). Better enticement is needed in a country full of vegetari¬
ans. Thus we see the birth of a completely new product, a new brand,
the McAloo Tikki burger, a spicy potato patty instead of a meat burger,
encased in the usual bun. Meanwhile, in parks and street corners and in¬
side shops tucked away in narrow lanes, the “indigenous” fast foods—
the kebab rolls and tangy chats, the samosas and pakoras, the golegappas
and dahi-vadas, the jilebis and imratis—continue to be made and
mopped up with unabated relish.

So I live with the realization that Indian food is even more of a mis¬
nomer than I had ever imagined. Yet there is no other satisfactory term,
since regional identities are in a permanent state of flux, all traditions
subject to being reworked, while borrowing and adapting of technique
and ingredients continue according to the perpetual migration of peo¬
ple within the country. Food in India has always been and still is fusion,
and a fusion that remains unfinished.

Outside my window, it is the New England autumn, the vivid fall col¬
ors reminding me of the intensely colorful celebrations of Bengal’s biggest
Hindu festival, Durga Puja, which is followed three weeks later by Diwali,
festival of lights, celebrated on the night of the new moon. I make some
of the festive ritual foods that were served in my parental home to mark
the occasions—luchis, puffy fried bread made with a dough of refined
flour; chholar dal, or yellow split peas seasoned with ginger and garam
masala; aloor dam, or slow-cooked potatoes with tamarind and asafetida; a
chilled pudding of thick evaporated milk infused with shredded sections
of tangerine. Remembering the Portuguese sweets connection, 1 also

EATING INDIA

261

make some chhana and stir it with sugar over a low flame until it reaches
the consistency of the Bengalis’ favorite sweet, sandesh. Before taking it
off the stove, I flavor it with several strands of Kashmiri saffron from my
carefully stored supply.

I know that even my best efforts will produce only an approxima¬
tion of what I grew up eating; things don’t taste the same in India and
America. Nevertheless, there is pleasure in striving to recreate remem¬
bered dishes. The joy of eating, especially for an immigrant in her
adopted country, is a complex one—part nostalgia, part discovery, and
part creation. In adding my personal touches to some of these ceremo¬
nial dishes, I am only doing what my mother and grandmother did
when they added their signatures to the recipes they had inherited.

Hindus believe in the theory of rebirth and reincarnation. Were it
possible to be reborn with the memory and vision of past lives and past
journeys intact—a capacity that is indeed granted to some fortunate
“seers,” according to both Hindu and Buddhist legends—I, too, would
be a believer. For after this odyssey, I know that one lifetime, one mem¬
ory, is not enough to eat, know, and absorb India.

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the generous help
given to me by many people. Those listed below include old friends and
new acquaintances who directly contributed to my project by sharing
with me their time and knowledge, and putting me in touch with im¬
portant resources.

Shermeen Ahmed, Dubai and Hyderabad
Radha Chandran and Chandran Ullatil, Cochin
Gouri Chatterjee, Calcutta
Shobha and Supratik Chatterjee, Hyderabad
Ananya Das and Debdatta Ganguly, Hyderabad
Biren Das, K. C. Das Private Ltd., Bangalore
Rathin Das, The Hindustan T/me5, Ahmedabad
Subhadra De, Calcutta

Maria D’Souza, Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Goa

Fleur D’Souza, St. Xavier’s College, Bombay

Mrs, Thritty Dastoor, Calcutta

Vikram G. Doctor, The Economic Times, Bombay

Nabhojit Ghosh, Taj Malabar, Cochin

Samit and Elaine Ghosh, Bangalore

Rajarshi Guriya, Fortune Katriya Hotel, Hyderabad

Linda Harrar, Wayland, Massachusetts

Diya Kar Hazra, Penguin Books, New Delhi

Gourav Jaswal, Synapse, Goa

Sandip Kachroo, Taj West End, Bangalore

26-4

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Anjum Katyal, Calcutta

Pradeep Khosla, Taj Krishna, Hyderabad

C. V. and Indira Krishnakumar, Trivandrum

Antoine Le\vis, The Savvy Cookbook, Bombay

Sandip and Mou Maiti, Bombay

Abhay Mangaldas, Agashiye, Ahmedabad

Professor P. C. Marcus, Cochin

Ken and Verjik Martin, Bolton, Massachusetts

Manoj Mishra, Taj Bengal, Calcutta

Sujan Mukherjee, Taj Bengal, Calcutta

Hemant Oberoi, Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Bombay

Mr. and Mrs. Digant Oza and Kajal Oza-Vaidya, Ahmedabad

Mr. and Mrs. D. N. Purkayastha, Calcutta

Basant Rawat, Ahmedabad

Maria de Lourdes Bravo da Costa Rodrigues, Goa

Ajith Saldana, Bangalore

Anuradha Sengupta, DNA, Bombay

Haku and Vilu Shah, Ahmedabad

Parthiv Shah, New Delhi

Nagendra Singh, Taj Residency, Lucknow

Rahul Verma, New Delhi

Ian Zachariah, Calcutta

I am particularly appreciative of all the efforts made by Biswaranjan
Sarkar to ensure the working-out of my complex itineraries and to
quickly resolve unexpected problems. Without his help, this journey
would have been fraught with difficulty.

I am also immeasurably indebted to Dr. Sasikumar, Dr. Gopal S. Pillai,
Dr. Sreeni, Mr. Kesava Rajendran, Sister Sreeja, and the staff and adminis¬
trators of the Chaithanya Eye Hospital in Cochin and in Trivandrum, for
looking after me so well during a very dark time.

To Karen Rinaldi and Amanda Katz at Bloomsbury, I owe a special
debt of gratitude for gracefully accommodating unforeseen delays and
providing consistent encouragement. Anne Edelstein, my agent, lavished

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

265

patience, attention, and invaluable advice on me during the years of
planning, traveling, and writing. Most of all, I am thankful for the un¬
varying support, nurturing, and motivation provided by my family. I
could not have got here without them.

A Note on the Author

Chitrita Banerji grew up in Calcutta and came to the United States as
a graduate student; she received her master’s degree in English from
Harvard University. She has since become an internationally recognized
writer on Bengali food, and is the author of Life and Food in Bengal, Ben¬
gali Cooking, Feeding the Gods, and Land of Milk and Honey. A two-time
winner of Sophie Coe awards in Food and History, she has written
about food for Gourmet, Gastronomica, Granta, the Boston Globe, and the
American Prospect. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

ChITRITA BaNERJI grew up in Calcutta
and came to the United States as a graduate
student; she received her master’s d^ee in
Enghsh from Harvard University. She has since
become an internationally recognized writer
on Bengali food, and is the author of Life and
Food in Bengal, Bengali Cooking: Seasons and
Festivals, Feeding the Gods: Memories of Food
and Culture in Bengal, and Land of Milk and
Honey: Travels in the History of Indian Food. A
two-time winner of Sophie Coe awards in Food
and History, she has written about food for
Gourmet, Gastronomica, Granta, the Boston
Globe, and the American Prospect. She lives in
ridge, Massachusetts.

esign: Natalie Slocum
mage: OR 3714 f.260v Mughal Emperor Feasting in
ard, from the Baburnama of Dhanraj, c.l591/British
London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library International
f photograph: Pierre Chiha

1 ^

From Eating India:

T he one thing I have learned from exploring the
realm of India’s food is that this is a civilization
with an insatiable, almost childlike curiosity.
India welcomes new trends and new foods with equal zeal;
she consumes the old and the new with eager voracity.
She has taught me that authenticity is a myth, that fusion
is not a mere restaurant fad, that tradition lives because it
is constantly being retouched. Even the weight of several
millennia’s history cannot imprison the spirit of this land
into staleness for long; dark and dismal eras do come, but
eventually the powerful Indian sun fights them off, with
light and energy.

B L O O A\ S B U R Y

ISBN-IQ: l-S'ib'il-Dlfl-b
ISBN-13: '17fl-l-S'ib'il-01fl-S
52495

9 781596 910188

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